A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural towns with a hinterland of villages are still commonly called market towns, as sometimes reflected in their names.
John Leland or Leyland was an English poet and antiquary.
Southam is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England. Southam is situated on the River Stowe, which flows from Napton-on-the-Hill and joins Warwickshire's River Itchen at Stoneythorpe, just outside the town.
Atherstone is a market town and civil parish in the North Warwickshire district of Warwickshire, England. Located in the far north of the county, Atherstone is on the A5 national route, and is adjacent to the border with Leicestershire which is here formed by the River Anker. It is only 4.5 miles (7.2 km) from Staffordshire. It lies between the larger towns of Tamworth and Nuneaton. Atherstone is the administrative centre of the North Warwickshire district, with the offices of North Warwickshire Borough Council located in the town.
Birmingham has seen 1400 years of growth and during which time it has evolved from a small 7th century Anglo Saxon hamlet on the edge of the Forest of Arden at the fringe of early Mercia to become a major city. A combination of immigration, innovation and civic pride helped to bring about major social and economic reforms and to create the Industrial Revolution, inspiring the growth of similar cities across the world.
Coleshill is a market town in the North Warwickshire district of Warwickshire, England, taking its name from the River Cole, on which it stands. It had a population of 6,481 in the 2011 Census and is situated 10 miles (16 km) east-northeast of Birmingham, 8.5 miles (13.7 km) southeast of Sutton Coldfield, 11 miles (18 km) south of Tamworth and 12.5 miles (20.1 km) northwest of Coventry by road.
The Old Crown, a pub in Deritend, claims to be one of the oldest extant secular buildings in Birmingham, England. It is Grade II* listed, and claims to date back to c. 1368, retaining its "black and white" timber frame, although almost all of the present building dates from the early 16th century.
The city of Birmingham, in England, has a long military history and has been for several centuries a major manufacturer of weapons. It may have been between Warwickshire and Worcestershire.
Henley-in-Arden is a town in the Stratford-on-Avon District in Warwickshire, England. The name is a reference to the former Forest of Arden. Henley is known for its variety of historic buildings, some of which date back to medieval times, and its wide variety of preserved architectural styles. The one-mile-long (1.6 km) High Street is a conservation area.
The Gun Quarter is a district of the city of Birmingham, England, which was for many years a centre of the world's gun-manufacturing industry, specialising in the production of military firearms and sporting guns. It is an industrial area to the north of the city centre, bounded by Steelhouse Lane, Shadwell Street and Loveday Street.
Bordesley is an area of Birmingham, England, 1.2 miles (2 km) south east of the city centre straddling the Watery Lane Middleway ring road. It should not be confused with nearby Bordesley Green. Commercial premises dominate to the west of the ring road, but much of this area is to be redeveloped. Blocks of residential apartments are planned and set for completion from the mid-2020s onwards. The largely residential area east of the ring road was renamed Bordesley Village following large scale clearance of back-to-back houses and redevelopment in the 1980s and 90s. Bordesley is the real life setting of the BBC series Peaky Blinders, and home to Birmingham City Football Club's ground, St Andrew's.
In European historiography, the term "staple" refers to the entire medieval system of trade and its taxation; its French equivalent is étape, and its German equivalent stapeln, words deriving from Late Latin stapula with the same meaning, derived from stabulum. designating a system that Hadrianus Junius considered to be of Gaulish origin.
Deritend ware is a distinctive style of medieval pottery produced in Birmingham, England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. There are three types of Deritend ware; a fine to moderately sandy, micaceous orange to red ware, used mainly for jugs, with some examples of bowls, dripping trays and aquamaniles, dating to the 13th to early 14th centuries; a black or, less frequently, grey ware with a brown core, also micaceous, used mainly for cooking pots/jars and less commonly for large unglazed jugs and skillets/pipkins, dating from possibly the late 12th century to the early 14th century; and a sandy brown ware with grey core used for cooking pots, dating from possibly the late 12th century to 13th century. Wasters i.e. pottery misfires have been found for all three wares in Birmingham. Glazed Deritend ware jugs were decorated with white slip lines and applied white clay strips, often roller stamped, and white clay pads, The more complex decorative schemes are in the North French style ; the decorated jugs closely resemble London-type ware and it is distinctly possible that the Deritend ware industry included migrant potters from the London area in the thirteenth century.
The Guild or Gild of the Holy Cross was a medieval religious guild in Birmingham, England. It was founded in 1392 by three burgesses of the town – John Coleshill, John Goldsmith and William atte Slowe – in place of an attempt to found a chantry in the parish church of St Martin in the Bull Ring, that had been licensed ten years earlier but never came into effect.
The Birmingham Manor House or Birmingham Moat was a moated building that formed the seat of the Lord of the Manor of Birmingham, England during the Middle Ages, remaining the property of the de Birmingham family until 1536. The buildings were demolished and the moat filled-in in 1815-16, but the remains of medieval stone structures excavated in 1973-75 survive intact beneath the buildings of the Birmingham Wholesale Markets.
The medieval English saw their economy as comprising three groups – the clergy, who prayed; the knights, who fought; and the peasants, who worked the landtowns involved in international trade. Over the five centuries of the Middle Ages, the English economy would at first grow and then suffer an acute crisis, resulting in significant political and economic change. Despite economic dislocation in urban and extraction economies, including shifts in the holders of wealth and the location of these economies, the economic output of towns and mines developed and intensified over the period. By the end of the period, England had a weak government, by later standards, overseeing an economy dominated by rented farms controlled by gentry, and a thriving community of indigenous English merchants and corporations.
The Guild or Gild of St John the Baptist was an English medieval religious guild in Deritend - an area of the manor of Birmingham within the parish of Aston. It maintained the priest of St John's Chapel, Deritend as its own chaplain, paying his stipend of £5 per year, and also supported a grammar school with its own schoolmaster.
Scottish trade in the Middle Ages includes all forms of economic exchange in the modern boundaries of Scotland and between that region with outside locations, between the departure of the Romans from Britain in the fifth century and the establishment of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. There are not the detailed custom accounts for most of the period that exist for England, that can provide an understanding of foreign trade. In the early Middle Ages the rise of Christianity meant that wine and precious metals were imported for use in religious rites. Imported goods found in archaeological sites of the period include ceramics and glass, while many sites indicate iron and precious metal working. The slave trade was also important and in the Irish Sea it may have been stimulated by the arrival of the Vikings from the late eighth century.
The medieval English wool trade was one of the most important factors in the medieval English economy. 'No form of manufacturing had a greater impact upon the economy and society of medieval Britain than did those industries producing cloths from various kinds of wool'. The trade's liveliest period, 1250–1350, was 'an era when trade in wool had been the backbone and driving force in the English medieval economy'.
John Tame of Cirencester and of Beauchamp Court in the parish of Fairford, both in Gloucestershire, England, was a wealthy wool producer and merchant who re-built the surviving St. Mary's Church, Fairford, the former structure of which had been built by one of the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick in the 15th century. The 28 Fairford stained glass windows he installed in the church are considered amongst the finest and most complete in England. He and his son Sir Edmund Tame (d.1534) so fostered the trade transacted at Fairford, that it came to rival that of the nearby long-established town of Cirencester, which increase was remarked upon by his contemporary the antiquary John Leland (d.1552): "Fairford never flourished afore the cumming of the Tames into it".
