The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Middle Ages: towns
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New medieval circuits or extensions were substantially of masonry in the larger towns such as
Berwick, Bristol, Edinburgh, London (Blackfriars), Newcastle, Norwich, Oxford, Shrewsbury,
Southampton, Stirling and Worcester. Gates of masonry were an essential part of these defences,
and a good number survive, though some of the circuit walls have been lost. In a further group
of towns, the gates were of masonry but the defences of earth and timber, giving both strength
and prestige to the entry points into the town. This was the case, for instance, at Aberdeen,
Coventry, Pontefract and Tewkesbury. At Banbury, there were four gates, but no walls; Glasgow
also had gates across its streets, but no defences. Towards the end of the medieval period, town
gates became increasingly ornamental and had little military significance. Similarly, few town
walls in England or Wales were ever seriously tested in warfare; very few were ever rebuilt to take
account of developments in the technology of warfare, such as the use of cannon from the late
fourteenth century.
Defences performed many secondary functions besides protection of the town and exclusion
of the outsider. Gates were used as accommodation for civic officers, as chapels, lock-ups and
meeting-rooms. The defensive system included fishponds at Stafford and York, and a lake at
Edinburgh; at Hereford and other towns, water from the town ditch drove mills.
Streets, markets and public buildings
In some towns, the meeting of main roads, and the market, was to be found at the gate of the
monastery or cathedral church, which took over the castle’s role as epicentre of the place; this
would have an effect on the neighbourhood round the new centre. Market life was also
inextricably mixed with daily religious observance. Markets were held in or near churchyards,
as at Llanelli or Haverfordwest; in many other places, churches lay in the middle of broad
market streets.
The local ruler controlled the revenue of trade by establishing a market within a town, on
only one site in the smaller and more typical towns. A central space, often near the main
church, would be made available for stalls, which over time became permanent structures and
buildings that in some cases survive today (as at Salisbury). By the late thirteenth century,
covered specialized markets and civic warehouses for food, grain or cloth were to be found in
larger towns. Recent work has reconstructed the mid-fifteenth-century Leadenhall market in
London (Samuel 1989). The complex comprised a large market space surrounded by arcades,
with warehouses above; a chapel; and a grammar school, endowed by the rich mercer Simon
Eyre. The larger places such as Bristol, Coventry and London had several specialized market
places for different commodities.
The chief civic building would be the town hall or guildhall. This begins to appear in records
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when towns were straining towards self-government.
During the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, many were rebuilt in grander fashion, often in
stone. Around the hall, used as a court and for assemblies, would be service buildings (especially
kitchens for feasts) and rooms used for storing arms and keeping prisoners. Timber-framed
public halls such as at Canterbury, Coventry, Leicester and Lavenham were adaptations of house
designs, but the larger towns in eastern England, during the fifteenth century, could afford guildhalls
in stone that are comparable with those in continental towns (London, King’s Lynn, Norwich,
York). Along with the structures (real and symbolic) of civic organization, there was the
infrastructure of justice, punishment and control. The larger prisons, such as the royal Fleet
Prison in London and the jail at Lydford (Devon), looked like castles; the Fleet had been built in
the late eleventh century on an island in the broad stream that ran down the side of the City of
London to meet the Thames.