Cirenceslre: the Medieval Period Commerce and Industry
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Cirenceslre: The Medieval Period 103 Little more is known of the grammar school i, while stones interpreted as a ford have been is recorded in Cirencester as early as 1242 (54478). uncovered to the west of the parish church (Rudder The site has not been located though Fuller thought it 1779). Together this evidence has been taken to could have been in Dyer Street (Fuller 1886-7).1The suggest that the River Churn, the so-called Inner school in Park Lane (54275) was founded in 145'7 by Chum, ran along Gosditch Street by the Ram Inn and the Bishop of Lincoln, with the master living rent free then down Cricklade Street. Such systems are well in an attached house. The building, now much known elsewhere (eg in Salisbury; Steane 1985) and altered, ceased to be a school after 1881 (Fll1ler the medieval system of water supply in Cirencester 1886-7; 1892-3d). I would benefit from further consideration. A single tavern is recorded, Church Tavern (54255), standing in the market place in the qpen Commerce and industry space on the east side of the south porch of St John's Church. Before about 1500, when the present pbrch At the heart of the town lay the market place (54111). was built, the crypt may have been used as the etllar The 'new market' recorded in 1086 was held on a to the tavern. According to Fuller (1874) the Swan Sunday. In a charter of Richard I the Abbots of the (54273) is recorded in 1540 as the Dakkar Gat~ Inn Augustinian Abbey were granted the market rights and travellers would have found shelter here as well and weekly markets were held on Mondays and as at the three hospitals and the Abbey granges or Fridays. The prosperity of the markets and the range guest houses. I' of goods being traded within the town is reflected in Miscreants might have' spent time in the a list of market tolls of 1321 which records over 80 thirteenth-century 'Gaol' (54082), the 'Cage' or 'blind items including cattle, horses, goats, bean and pea house' (perhaps some kind of temporary lock-up meal, cheese, butter, fish, salt, alum, iron, lead, tin, (54479» or the stocks (54088) which were all to be brass, linen, silk and cloth with gold (Welsford 1987a, found in the market place. The sites of the medieval 48-9; Fuller 1932). pillory and gallows are unknown but there is Like many other Gloucestershire towns the market documentary evidence to show that the Abbot had was situated in a widened section of the main street, his own gallows after 1222 (Welsford 1987a), LIhe and operated from temporary stalls set up in the ducking stool (54055) was at the mill pond at Swyne open area between the site of the Pig Cross at the Bridge just outside the Abbey precinct or perhaps northern end of Dyer Street (formerly Chepying or beside Clement's Bridge. This was presumably a Chipping Street) and the High Cross at the western chair fixed to a pole, called a gong stool (and hence end of the Market Place opposite the Ram Inn. In the the name Gunstool Brook) which could be lowered course of time permanent buildings took their place, into the water (Slater 1976a). I a process documented by the townspeople of The inhabitants of medieval Cirencester probably Cirencester who complained in 1343 that the'Abbots relied upon wells for their drinking water. Fromlthe have encroached on the King's Highway since 1203, late twelfth century the Abbey was provided 'Vith and built houses on the market place' (Slater 1976a, piped water supplied from a spring calIed 101), Encroachments of this kind onto public spaces Letherwell, possibly located east of the Glouce~ter were a common feature of market towns but The Road near the Gildenbridge (Beecham 1887,166; Shambles, comprising Butter Row, Butchers Rowand Evans 1991). There are legends in the town of a Shoe Lane, were eventually demolished in 1830, A tunnel which connects the Spitalgate lodge there with second market represented by the placename West the Abbey. Certainly, there are culverts, possibly of Market Place (54215) may also be identified to the medieval origin, which were channelled pastlthe north of the parish church. former Abbey Mill site and led between the former In common with other market-based medieval buildings inside the precinct (see plan in Fuller towns dispersed markets did not develop in each 1892-3b; Evans 1991). Presumably they fed the sector of the town and residential areas were clearly reredorter and the iauatorium but this concernjfor demarcated from commercial sectors. Instead, all hygiene does not appear to have been extended to specialities were catered for within the central the town, for example in the provision of public general market which was highly accessible and latrines, and town houses must have had their dwn easily controlled. Like Fairford and unlike Tetbury or cesspits. t Stow, Cirencester's triangular market place does not The influence of watercourses on the urban seem to have been deliberately planned. topography is clear, for example in establishing [the There is limited evidence for cloth-finishing plot divisions at the rear of properties fronting onto processes in the medieval town, much of it based Coxwell Street and Black Jack Street. Other urban upon written evidence and the remains of structures streams are also indicated. A documentary reference rather than upon the study of tools used in textile of 1413 refers to the New Cross as being by a stream, manufacture. The name Dyer Streethas been taken to 104 Pa rt lJI: Data Inle..prelation and Reco..d Develop",ent imply an embryonic industrial quarter in the and tenter-hooks together with their distributions fourteenth century. However, there is good reason to which might help to locate drying racks, for instance. doubt this interpretation on the grounds that there is There is limited documentary evidence for the no running water close to Dyer Street, which would leather trade in medieval Cirencester, By the have been needed to serve dyehouses and Gildenbrigge at the end of Gloucester Street there workshops. Given the lack of supporting archae was a waterrnill, called Brain's Mill (54480), which ological evidence, best documented from the Lower was apparently in the possession of the Abbot by the Brook Street site in Winchester (Biddle 1990), it may end of the thirteenth century (Welsford 1987a). be that the name, Dyer Street, was taken from a According to Harmer (1924, 320), tanning and personal name, someone who may, or may not , have malting were carried out here. It seems likely that the been employed as a dyer (see above). mill ground the oak bark used in the tanning process The cleaning and thickening of the cloth was and this may indicate a tannery operating at some carried out at water-driven fulling mills, of which scale (Cherry 1991). Typically the archaeological there are six recorded from the town. Barton Mill evidence would comprise lime pits for defleshing, (54250), according to Baddeley was formerly called dung pits for de-lining and soaking pits for tanning Chester Mill, and before that Maz, Mayesmille, (eg Shaw 1984 for Northampton). Sites are likely to Magres Mill or Peace Mill (Fuller 1932). From the be close to water and usually on the fringes of the early thirteenth century the tenant was Richard town, so the Gloucester Street identification is not Clerk, hence the name Clerksrnills, which may improbable. indicate two mills at this same site (Ross 1964). The A small hearth of late thirteenth- Or fourteenth modern name of Barton Mill came into use in the mid century date discovered on the north side of Coxwell sixteenth century. Street is thought to have been used for the wo rking The Abbey Mill (54086), used by the monks of of bronze (Wacher 1963, 22). Evidence elsewhere Cirencester Abbey, was situated on the Gunstool suggests that the working of copper alloys was on a Brook just within the abbey precinct, in Gosditch domestic scale and slag is common in excavations in Street. In 1559 it is recorded 'that a mill had stood at medieval towns generally. Bronze was ideal for the first bridge from the church but that this had now making small dress fitments, metal pots and jugs as been taken down'. Presumably the building was well as larger and more specialised work like bell removed with the Abbey buildings at the founding (Blair and Blair 1991). Examples of Dissolu tion. metalwork found in the town include buckles and Built by Abbot Blake in cl530 St Mary's or New brooches (eg fifteenth-century garter buckle in Mill (54187), continued as a cloth mill until about Partridge Way; and fifteenth-century belt clasp from 1830 when it became a flock mill. In 1912/13 the mill the amphitheatre). portion was demolished although some part of the The accurate dating of archaeological sequences in retaining walls of the mill do remain. On the line of the post-Conquest period underpins all inter the Roman town defences, Leland records that 'nere pretation. In Cirencester, few medieval sequences are to the Place where the right goodly Clothing Mylle datable with any degree of precision. Wooden and was set up a late by the Abbate, was broken down metal objects seem to be under-represented because the Ruine of an old Tower toward making of the of decay or the recycling of materials. The Mylle Waules' (Toulmin Smith 1964). chronological and spatial distribution of these objects Langley Mill (54186), to the south of New Mill, is unstudied but would doubtless reflect, at least in shared the same water source with inevitable part, the inferior place of medieval studies in most consequences.