Abstract
In order for towns to come into being and to grow, a number of factors needed to converge, and isolating any one of them as the key variable can be a bit misleading. There needed to be economic growth on a scale that would support an urban structure, but the impetus towards town creation and the shape that the urban network took was determined also by the actions of those in power. There are, then, elements of both a bottom-up and a top-down explanation for the emergence of towns in medieval Britain, deriving on the one hand from organic growth, the expansion of the population and the growth of the market, and on the other from the way in which economic growth was stimulated by and manipulated by lords.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
H. Clarke and B. Ambrosiani, Towns in the Viking Age (Leicester, 1991), p. 15.
J. Blair, The minsters of the Thames’, in J. Blair and B. Golding (eds), The Cloister and the World (Oxford, 1996), pp. 12–14.
C. Dyer, ‘Recent developments in early medieval urban history and archaeology in England’, in D. Denecke and D. Shaw (eds), Urban Historical Geography: Recent Progress in Britain and Germany (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 74–5.
B. J. Graham, The town and the monastery: early medieval urbanisation in Ireland, AD 800–1150’, in T. E. Slater and G. Rosser (eds), The Church in the Medieval Town (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 131–4.
E. Miller and J. Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts 1086–1348 (London, 1995), pp. 393–4.
R. Britnell, ‘The proliferation of markets in England, 1200–1349’, Economic History Review 2nd ser., 34 (1981), p. 210; Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England: Towns, Commerce and Crafts p. 159.
N.J. Mayhew, ‘Modelling monetization’, in R. H. Britnell and B. M. S. Campbell (eds), A Commercialising Economy: England 1086-c.1300 (Manchester, 1995), pp. 70–1; Britnell, Commercialisation pp. 102–3.
R. M. Spearman, ‘The medieval townscape of Perth’, in M. Lynch, M. Spearman and G. Stell, The Scottish Medieval Town (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 42–59.
G. Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy (London, 1974).
K. J. Stringer, David, Earl of Huntingdon (Edinburgh, 1985), p. 70.
R. R. Davies, Conquest, Coexistence and Change: Wales 1066–1415 (Oxford, 1987), p. 168.
M. Altschul, A Baronial Family in Medieval England: The Clares 1217–1314 (Baltimore, 1965), p. 285.
J. Bradley, ‘Planned Anglo-Norman towns in Ireland’, in H. B. Clarke and A. Simms (eds), The Comparative History of Urban Origins in Non-Roman Europe BAR International Series 255 (1985), pp. 420–1; Clarke, ‘Decolonisation and the dynamics of urban decline’.
I. Soulsby, The Towns of Medieval Wales (Winchester, 1983), p. 18.
H. Summerson, ‘The place of medieval Carlisle in the commerce of northern England in the thirteenth century’, in P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (eds), Thirteenth Century England I (Woodbridge, 1986), p. 142.
D. H. Owen, ‘The middle ages’, in D. H. Owen (ed.), Settlement and Society in Wales (Cardiff, 1989), p. 217.
E. Rutledge, ‘Immigration and population growth in early fourteenth century Norwich: evidence from a tithing roll’, Urban History Yearbook (1988), p. 27.
P. Nightingale, ‘The growth of London in the medieval English economy’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 95–8.
P. G. B McNeill and H.L. MacQueen (eds), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 196–8;
E. Gemmill and N. Mayhew, Changing Values in Medieval Scotland: a Study of Prices, Money, Weights and Measures (Cambridge, 1995), p. 9.
R. E. Glasscock, ‘Land and people c.1300’, in A. Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland. II. Medieval Ireland 1169–1534 (Oxford, 1993), p. 235.
M. Bailey, ‘Peasant welfare in England, 1290–1348’, Economic History Review 2nd ser., 51 (1998), p. 236.
A. Dyer, Decline and Growth in English Towns, 1400–1640 (Cambridge, 1991) sums up the debate.
C. Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1979).
M. Bailey, ‘A tale of two towns: Buntingford and Standon in the later middle ages’, Journal of Medieval History 19 (1993), pp. 351–71.
R. R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dthr (Oxford, 1995), pp. 282–3.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1999 Heather Swanson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Swanson, H. (1999). Urbanisation . In: Medieval British Towns. Social History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27578-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27578-6_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-63361-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-27578-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)