The articulation of burgages and streets in early medieval towns - part 2

ABSTRACT

This is the second part of an examination of one particular aspect of the planning process in new towns of the early medieval period in England which were set out on a rectilinear module. In all these planned towns, the way in which burgages were laid out at the corners of streets meeting at right angles will have always been problematical. Four towns (excluding Bridgnorth, discussed earlier), ranging in date from the late ninth to the late twelfth century, are examined to illustrate one particular way in which these spatial problems were resolved. Deductions are made from this evidence concerning the contemporaneity or otherwise of streets and burgage systems, seen as inter-functional ensembles. These observations and deductions generate new historical narratives relating to both the morphogenetic development of the towns studied and, in some cases, the wider course of the development of urbanism in general.

Keywords:

• Barnstaple
• Bridgnorth
• Ludlow
• Wells
• Worcester
• burgages
• medieval town-plan analysis

Notes

1 This is accepted, at least in part, in Slater’s revised model of the development of the town, and (somewhat equivocally) in David Train’s subsequent detailed analysis of all the evidence relating to the town walls (Slater 1990, pp. 70–1; Train 1999, p. 30). This thesis does not, however, appear to gain much favour in David Lloyd’s analysis of Ludlow’s history — see note 3 below (Lloyd 2008). It is intended to discuss this and other questions relating to the topography and history of the town at a later date

2 This is a graphic illustration of a particular problem in town-plan analysis highlighted in the first part of this study (Haslam 2016, pp. 66–7). This involves the way in which plan units — and, on a smaller scale, Conzen’s different micro ‘morphological areas’ or ‘plan-type areas’ — are defined. The definition and isolation of these areas, on whatever grounds, creates the pre-supposition that the formation of these contiguous units are consecutive in their origin and course of development, which assumption is then built into the way that the urban fabric is analysed and presented as being laid out in stages as a multi-period palimpsest.

3 Lloyd asserts that the town wall and ditch were ‘superimposed on an earlier street layout, causing distortion and dislocation of plots’ (Lloyd 2008, p. 71), reflecting Conzen’s original assumption that the defences were new at the time of the murage grants in the thirteenth century. This conclusion is, however, by no means demonstrated by the instances he cites. On the contrary, the patterns of layout of the burgages immediately inside and outside the wall show marked differences on all its sides.

4 This model is at variance with several mutually exclusive models of the development of the town put forward by various historians, notably Conzen, Slater and Lloyd — see references in the text above. These issues will be discussed in detail elsewhere.

5 The dating evidence is significant and intriguing, but cannot be discussed further here.

6 A remarkable parallel to the pattern of interlocking burgages at the corner of two streets meeting at right angles can be recognised at Derby, a burh in West Mercia created in 917 by Æthelflæd. Similar conclusions about the layout of this burh can be drawn by analogy with the pattern at Barnstaple.