F-VAI- URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY and GEOGRAPHY Týºilgnhl Ý3 by Nigel
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TOWNS, TENEMENTS, AND BUILDINGS ASPSC'rS 017 INMDI: F-VAI- URBAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY ý3 týºilGNhl By Nigel Baker B. A. K I. F. A. Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 1990 ABSTRACT This thesis will argue that the most effective way of' understanding the physical development of medieval towns, particularly the larger, more complex, towns and those which lack extensive and detailed contemporary documentation, is by a structured integration of the data derived from the archaeological investigation of individual sites with detailed town-plan analyses following the methodology introduced and developed by Conzen. This will be demonstrated by two case-studies, designed to explore the Interaction of the different sources of evidence at two different scales of investigation. The first case-study is a detailed analysis of the plan and development of the whole of a large medieval town (Worcester), the second is a study of a single street (Pride Hill in Shrewsbury. The analysis of Worcester illuminates, in particular, the boundaries and internal layout of the late 9th-century burh, suggesting that it was an extension to the pre-existing Roman earthwork circuit and incorporated an area subJect to regular town planning, possibly following Wessex models, and an area of irregular settlement that included the bishop of Worcester's haga recorded in 904. The defences were, It is argued, partly dismantled for the extension of urban settlement. The Shrewsbury case-study examines an unusually- concentrated building pattern of halls behind the street frontage, and sets this in its contemporary context by an analysis of the contemporary plot-pattern, identified in part by its association with surveyed medieval undercrofts. The earlier history of the area is explored r through further analysis of the plot-pattern which pre- dates and is cut by the town wall. It is suggested that the area in question was, like other sectors of the early medieval urban fringe, possibly subject to some type of regular land-allotment for grazing and access to the riverbank. Issues, illustrating the mutually-illuminating character of town plan analysis and urban archaeology, arising from the two case-studies, are discussed. These include the role of archaeology in reconstructing morphological change, the problems of the chronology of urban extensions, archaeology and the interpretation of cart ographically-recorded features, and the role of plan- analysis in establishing a contemporary spatial context for individual and multiple archaeological investigations in early medieval towns. CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ABSTRACT I INTRODUCTION 1: 1 Parallel threads: town plans and tenements in historical and archaeological studies (p. 1) 1: 2 Town-plan analysis (p. 6) 1: 3 The investigation of medieval towns: problems and solutions. Aims and structure of thesis (p. 10). 2A PLAN ANALYSIS OF WORCESTER 2: 1 The medieval city in context (p. 18) 2: 2 Plan analysis methodology (p. 30) 2: 3 Plan analysis (p. 39) 2: 4 Plan analysis discussion (p. 110) 2: 5 Parochial topography (p. 117) 2: 6 Concliislons: the development of Worcester (p. 146) 3 THE DEVELOPMENTOF PRIDE HILL, SHREWSBURY 3: 1 Pride Hill in context: an introduction to Shrewsbury (p. 164) 3: 2 Buildings and plots on Pride Hill (p. 173) 3: 3 Discussion- the Pride Hill plot series and its context (p. 212) 4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 4: 1 Archaeology and morphological change (p. 242) 4: 2 Chronology (p. 254) 4: 3 Establishing contexts (p. 259) 4- 4 Conclusions (p. 269) SOURCES FOR THE TOWN PLAN OF WORCESTER FOOTNOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FIGURES LIST OF FIGURES Worcester: The medieval city and Its geological background (after Barker 1968-9, fig-1) 2. Worcester: Modern contours and Roman features. 3. Worcester: the environs of the medieval city., roads and parishes 4. Worcester: The medieval city and its suburbs 5. Worcester: the medieval intramural city 6. Worcester: medieval and modern Intramural streets 7. Worcester: medieval plan-units in the city and suburbs 8. Worcester., medieval Intramural plan-units 9. Worcester: The Broad Street - Birdport area, with. excavated areas, 1965-1990 10. Worcester: Broad Street and the Anglo-Saxon defences 11. Worcester: the High Street North plan-unit (6) with primary plot boundaries 12. Worcester: the Birdport area and the 904 Haya.- interpretative plan 13. Worcester: the area north of the cathedral close, with the excavated Roman defences 14. Worcester: the Copenhagen Street plan-unit. - interDretative reconstruction of planned area 15. Worcester. Friar Street and New Street: j:)lots and their metrology 16. Worcester- the SldbUrv area, with excavated area 1976-1977 17. Worcester: the Sidbury area. - Interpretative plan 18. Worcester: the ForegatelTvthing suburb: plots and metrology 19, Worcester. Silver Street and Lowesmoor 20. Worcester: the Causewav and Cripplegate plan-units 21. Worcester: the St fohn's plan-units 22. Worcester: a reconstruction of the burh 23. Worcester: parishes and Property boundaries In the medieval Intramural city 24. Worcester: hypothetical development of the medieval city 25. Worcester and other burhs. - comparative plans 26. Worcester. cartographic sources plan 27. Shrewsburv., the medieval town and its suburbs 28. Shrewsburv: medieval intramural plan-units (interim) (plan-unit numbers refer to text) 29. Shrewsbury: the High Street area with primary plot boundaries 30. ShrewsbUry: the Raven Meadows area (modern), showing location of principal sites 31. Shrewsbury: the Bennett's Hall site, with location of excavated area and principal watching-brief' f'eatures 32. Shrewsbury: the Bennett's Hall site: excavation plans I- medieval 2- early post-medieval 33. Shrewsbury: the Bennett's Hall site - schematic section (see fig. 31 for location) 34. Shrewsbury: S3,13-16 Pride Hill - composite plan (some modern walls omitted) 35. Shrewsbury., 53,13-16 Pride Hill - schematic cross- sections. I- extant 2-a reconstruction Shrewsburv: S3,13-16 Pride Hill - interval elevatiori of south-east wall (facing street) 37. Shrewsbury: S4 and 95. Schematic section offlo. 22 Pride Hill and Seventy Steps. 38. Shrewsbury: the frontage area of Nos. 20 and 22 Pride Hill - recorded cellarage 3.9. Shrewsburv: 22 Pride Hill, Internal elevations of cellars S4 and S5 40. Shrewsbury: the north-west side of Pride Hill - plot boundaries and early buildings 41. Shrewsburv: plot-systems In the Raven Meadows area 42. Comparative plot-patterns - medieval bridgehead areas 43. Comparative building plans - first-floor halls and related structures In ShrewsburV 44. Comparative tenement plans - halls behind the frontage 45. Shrewsbury: the abbey and its surroundings 46. Walsall: reconstructed plan of the ear, Iv toým 47. A recent multi-tenement excavation and Its immediate context - Flaxengate, Lincoln. i 1.1 Parallel threads: town plans and tenements in historical and archaeological studies. In 1967, Dr Urry wrote of Canterbury: 'within the walls the modern ground-plan can be carried back into the twelfth century. A few modest alleys have disappeared and a new street (Guildhall Street) cut, but otherwise within the walls the layout is much the same as in the reign of King John' (Urry 1967,185). He had arrived at this conclusion from his detailed research, first of all on a series of detailed Christchurch rentals dating from the mid 12th century to the early 13th, and on charters selected from more than five hundred that survived from the 13th century and earlier, and secondly, by comparing the information contained in these documents with the well-known mid- 12th-century plan of the cathedral waterworks, and with 17th-, 18th-century, and modern maps (1967,3-4,185). The level of detail contained, in particular, in the rentals, allowed Urry to assess with great precision the correspondence between the modern and 12th-century topography of particular areas: 'At the sale a few years ago of property north of St Peter's church, Canterbury, it was discovered that the vendors had no documentary title to a strip of ground about six feet wide running up the middle of the garden. It was quite easy to account for this lack of title for the strip of ground was none other than the old 'eastern lane' described on this axis in Rental D at the end of the twelfth century'. He continued: 'A remarkable fact emerging from the study of the rentals is that not only has the general twelfth- century plan of Canterbury survived largely unaltered to this day, but in many instances the ground-plot occupied by a citizen of 750 years ago has also survived, sometimes 2 in depth and sometimes in length, and occasionally both' (Urry 1967,191). However, this static picture was by no means uniformly applicable throughout the town. Elsewhere Urry noted 'burgess-holding in Canterbury, and no doubt in all other ancient boroughs, is not a unity, unchanged and unchanging from the earliest times, but has an organic growth, can be broken up, added to, combined with adjacent ground, and cut up again with no reference to its one-time components, until all trace of any original arrangement is completely obliterated' (1967,150). He went on to describe the development of the house of Tacob the Jew, where three plots were amalgamated to form a single large plot, later re-divided land part joined with vacant ground nearby' (Urry 1967,150-2). Canterbury was not alone in having a town plan which, when the modern landscape was compared with detailed medieval documentary evidence, showed a mixture of continuity and change in the extent of individual properties: the same picture is implicit in H. E. Salter's Survey of Oxford (1960,1968) and in his earlier Map of Medieval Oxford (1934). Continuity and change are equally evident in Winchester. According to Keene 'It was probably in the most densely occupied areas that physical boundaries were most stable, at least near the street frontages.