Resources - Plotting the Past, Planning the Future - Inheriting the Landscape

Plotting the Past, Planning the Future - Inheriting the Landscape

C.900 AD The Saxon Borough

In the years just before 900 a borough or burh - a fortified town offering a secure and regulated market - was formally founded at Worcester. An agreement was made between Bishop Waerferth and Aethelred, lord of the old English kingdom of Mercia, and his wife Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great of Wessex. The bishop was helped to fortify his city in return for a share of the profits arising from its administration.

Worcester - c.900 AD

The burh was a fortified extension to the north of the old Roman earthwork enclosure containing the cathedral. It may have made use of surviving Roman defences in this area too. Within was the High Street, which was also the market place, with plots laid out along it, while to the west was a single large, enclosed, property. This was located in the area west of the present Deansway, and would have included most of the defended town's waterfront. Commercially of great potential, it was leased by the bishop to Aethelred and Aethelflaed and their descendants.

C.1000 AD Saxon - Worcester grows

By the beginning of the last millennium, Worcester had begun to outgrow its defences and was becoming more intensively developed. A suburb was growing, known as 'south-of-the-borough' - suthan byrig, later Suthbiri.

Outside another of the gates, by All Saints' church, houses probably extended down Newport Street (Eport) towards the river crossing: that is likely to have been a defended bridge. Within the walls, there are signs that one of the tenth-century bishops, possibly Oswald, flattened the old Roman defences that lay between his cathedral and the growing borough, and laid out the ground with a simple grid of streets running off the High Street at regular intervals.

Worcester - c.1000 AD

1100 AD Anglo-Norman Worcester

The immediate physical impact of the Norman Conquest on English Worcester was the building of a castle - to monitor it and, if need be, suppress it. But the city continued to grow, and successive bishops continued to play the central organising role in its growth.

Worcester - 1100 AD

In 1084 Bishop Wulfstan (one of the few English bishops remaining in office long after 1066) began a great rebuilding of the cathedral: much of the footprint and parts of the structure of the present cathedral and cloister are his work. Around 1100, one of Wulfstan's successors laid out a great new, planned, suburb, now Foregate and Foregate Street, extending from the area (now The Cross) just outside the old Saxon north gate, as far as the Tything. The old suburbs continued to grow, and housing spread over the river onto the west bank.

The Medieval City

The city continued to grow through the 12th century. Areas like those around Broad Street and Mealcheapen were still being developed. All of the city churches were rebuilt, some probably for the first time in stone. Hospitals and a nunnery were founded out in the suburbs. Then, before 1200, work began on a new circuit of defences - well outside the line of the old Saxon defences - except in the south, where they ran into the castle. The new defences were completed with the surviving city wall. With this, the basic framework of the modern city centre was complete: its early life in this state is represented by the model...

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Introduction

Aerial Views of Worcester

The Worcester 1250 Model

Making the Model

Life in 13th Century Worcester

The Life of a Plot

Inheriting the Landscape

Related Topics

Potted Histories - Medieval Worcester

Worcester Maps & Plans

Things To Do

Worcester City History Awards for Schools