By 1377 the population of Worcester had grown to c.3000, and during the 16th century this figure reached c.8000. This community was engaged with an enormous variety of trades and crafts (over 40 are documented for the city in the late 13th century) as one might expect from a thriving medieval city, and archaeological evidence has revealed evidence for some of these including bronze working, bell- founding, tile-making (using the locally available clays), tanning, butchering, fishing, bone working, needle making and minting).

The success of Worcester’s trading community is shown by the distances over which they did business, buying wool in Herefordshire and selling cloth in London, importing wine from South-western France, pottery from Germany and Spain, dried cod from Iceland (via Bristol), metals from the Low Countries and the Forest of Dean, and dyestuffs from the continent. The bustling waterfront quays on the east bank would have provided employment for boatmen and carriers, while the dense cluster of buildings which grew up from the waterfront spreading up towards present day Deansway, contained numerous inns, and the Tything became famous for its prostitutes. The rural estates round Worcester would have supplied the city with much of its basic foodstuffs, and the surviving medieval fishpond complex at Middle Battenhall Farm provides us with an idea as to the scale and sophistication of estate management at the time.

Large-scale cloth manufacture came to dominate the city’s economy during the 15th century, with the Dolday/Newport Street suburb becoming the centre of the industry, and with the establishment of the Worcester Clothier’s Company, or Guild, which retained close links with the Blackfriars. By the 16th century, half the employed population worked in Worcester’s clothing industry as spinners, weavers, dyers, fullers and carders, and documents record famous clothiers like William Mucklow selling high quality Worcester cloth to merchants from Brussels and Antwerp.

By the Elizabethan Period, and thanks in part to the political and financial skills of the Bishops, Worcester had become established as a prosperous regional market and religious centre, the largest town in a 20 mile radius, and with an international reputation for its products. The population by this time lived primarily within timber buildings, the few survivals including Tudor House and No.s 14-20 Friar Street, The Golden Lion on the High Street, and Queen Elizabeth House on Trinity Street. While a prosperous city, the lives of many of the inhabitants would have been subject to a poverty and brutality of existence which would come as a shock today, and it is therefore worth remembering that the price of Worcester’s medieval greatness was paid as much by the toil and suffering of its ordinary citizens as it was by the commercial acumen of its entrepreneurs and ecclesiastical grandees.