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An English small town in the later Middle Ages: Loughborough

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

David Postles
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Abstract

The thesis of ‘urban decline’ in the late Middle Ages has been largely based on changes within incorporated boroughs. Loughborough was a small town in Leicestershire, closely involved in intra-regional exchange between three different farming regions. By the late fourteenth century, if not before, its central precinct had a definite urban form, including a specialized marketing form. Indicators (such as demographic estimates, litigation, and property-holding) suggest that the town did not suffer any substantial decline in the late Middle Ages. Structural changes in the countrysides, with a greater emphasis on specialization of production, may have maintained the town as a centre of exchange and consumption.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , April 1993 , pp. 7 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 I am grateful to an anonymous referee, Margaret Bonney, and to a number of people who have commented on various drafts of this paper. For an urban hierarchy in relationship to its ‘region’, see Dyer, C., ‘The hidden trade of the Middle Ages: evidence from the West Midlands of England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 141–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar and see also Hilton, R.H., A Medieval Society. The West Midlands at the End of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1966), 167–216Google Scholar. For the ‘social location’ of towns see Abrams, P., ‘Towns and economic growth: theories and problems’, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E.A. (eds), Towns in Societies (Cambridge, 1978), 9–33.Google Scholar

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37 P.R.O. E179/133/116, mm. 2 and 2d.

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