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Was Saffron Walden a typical medieval market town?
To find out if Saffron Walden was a typical medieval market town we will compare it with other towns we know were.
I will be comparing Saffron Walden with Hereford, Sailsbury and Ludlow. One thing that they all must have is a market. All these towns have a market because we saw it on the map and maps have no reason to be biased or lie. We can see in the maps of Sailsbury and Hereford the grid pattern that markets had and all the specific rows like Butcher row and Milk lane. Saffron Walden has a market because we saw the market and its grid patterns; it also has roads like mercer’s row and Butcher’s row. A church is also a vital part and all the maps show churches in these towns. We know that Saffron Walden had one because we saw it there and form other sources know it was built in medieval times. In Saffron Walden we saw a castle that was made in medieval times; this is also an important part of a typical medieval town. Hereford and Ludlow both had castles but we could not see one on the Sailsbury map. However we can see a road called Castle Street and this street is starting to curve like an inner bailey. From this we think there most probably was a church. Typical medieval towns would have had typical medieval buildings. We can not tell from the map if the houses were typical timber framed houses but we do know that Saffron Walden had these because we saw them and saw all the usual parts including bressumer beam, over hanging jetty and sole plate. A medieval town would have walls to stop people form coming into there town. We didn’t see any walls in Saffron Walden but we think that there was some type of defence. There were two ditches made at a right angle to each other and the roads also joined to these to make a rectangle around the town. These could have been there walls. Hereford and Ludlow had walls because we saw them on the maps but we didn’t see one on the Salisbury map but this does not necessarily mean there isn’t one because the map doesn’t show everything. As I have already said is that we can see the market grid pattern on the maps and in saffron Walden still today so this is another thing to prove that it was a typical medieval market town. I have also said how the towns have specialised streets such as Milk Lane and we can see this on all the maps apart from the Ludlow map but we do know it has a market because the map shows it and says it does. The map shows a very slight grid pattern but it’s not easy to see. These towns would of needed a gate to get into there town and form the maps we can’t see but we can see on the map of Hereford is a road called Bye street without the gate, This shows that there used to be a gate there. Burgage plots were something that different houses had and showed that they were medieval buildings or used to be before new ones were built over them. We saw that Saffron Walden had them but can’t really see form the maps. Medieval market towns were usually near a river and we can see that Hereford had one and Ludlow we can’t see on the map of Sailsbury but there might be one. Saffron Walden doesn’t have a river running through it and when it was built didn’t have a main road. Most medieval market towns would have a hill and we saw one in Saffron Walden with a castle on top but there is insufficient information on the maps to see this apart form the Ludlow map were we can see the castle on top of the hill.
