Saffron Walden as a Typical Medieval Market Town

Saffron Walden as 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.