Worcester People - There are thought to have been about 2500 people in Worcester in the middle of the 13th century, representing something like 600-800 individual households. Most Worcester households in the 13th century are likely to have been based - as today - on the married couple and the small nuclear family. When detailed records first become available (a century later, in the 1370’s) the average household contained 2.3 people. Teenagers rarely lived with their parents: by the age of fourteen they had mostly left home to live and work in other households and businesses as apprentices and servants (there was no clear distinction).

It was the drapers, brewers and butchers in particular that had the most numerous households and employees, followed by fullers and dyers in the cloth-finishing trades, and cordwainers (leather workers). While many of these businesses operated on an almost industrial scale, crafts such as tailoring, shoe-making, weaving, and tanning were carried out by households consisting of just a married couple.

The earliest records of occupations in Worcester list over forty different crafts, but no single one dominated the city. The most numerous individual crafts were the tailors, shoemakers, and brewers. Taken as a group, the food-related occupations (butchers and brewers particularly) employed the largest numbers, followed by the leatherworkers (shoemakers, tanners).

From surviving lists made when taxes were collected, it is possible to gain an impression of patterns of wealth and poverty across the city, and to see which occupations predominated in particular streets or parishes. Of the ten Worcester parishes, the wealthiest was St Helen’s, closely followed by St Swithin’s; between them they covered the High Street from the Cross to the cathedral. Almost all the city’s mercers (textile merchants) and drapers lived in St Helen’s parish, and a high proportion of St Swithin’s population also worked in the cloth trade.

City wealth by parish.

All Saints’ parish, covering the riverside Newport Street - Dolday area, was less wealthy. It was developing into an industrial district, with numbers of leatherworkers, including tanners, and cloth producers, particularly dyers and fullers, all trades that needed ready access to running water. Stonemasons too sought out a particular area to live and work, and were to be found mostly around the cathedral. Some trades were to be found almost everywhere, particularly those related to food and drink.

The suburbs were generally the poorest areas of the city. There were many single-person households there, often labourers. The model reflects these patterns of wealth and occupation. The largest and the wealthiest houses (often with stone halls attached or behind) are on the High Street and around the Guildhall area. This is the busiest area of the city, where shops are concentrated on the street frontages. Further away from the centre development is less intensive, many frontage sites occupied by small timber-framed halls (dwellings and workplaces), or cottages. Further out still, in the quietest side-streets and in the suburbs, most buildings are cottages: one storey, one-room houses. The industrial quarter in All Saints’ parish (approaching the bridge) is marked by plots with small service buildings, storage pits and tanks in the back yards.