Ludlow self catering cottages




Ludlow selfcatering cottages, Ludlow castle, Ludlow town, Ludlow town plan, Corve street track, Traders and Artisans, travels, Ludlow, town, castle, market town, market, town, burgage plots, Rod, Pole, perch, farming communities, holiday cottages, Ludlow selfcatering cottages, ,

You may find the text below an interesting read if you are planning to stay in our holiday cottages.



old map of Ludlow

Ludlow developed principally during the late 11th and the 12th century, and by the year1200 the town had reached its full medieval extent. Ludlow castle and town was built on the lands of the manor of Stanton, which were given by William the Conqueror to a close friend of his, William fitz Osborne. In 1071 this land passed to Walter de Lacy and in 1085 to his son Roger de Lacy. It was Walter and his son Roger de Lacy who built Ludlow Castle . Although there would appear to be earlier roots of a tiny village called Dinham at the side of this castle site, any other habitation in the area would have been sparse and mainly farming communities. As the castle was built, and inhabited with gentry and soldiers, one can imagine the excitement of the farmers near and far, how swiftly the word would spread, and how the people came to see this wonderful piece of their good luck. The de Lacy's saw a commercial opportunity rolling out in front of them at their very gates, it came in the form of the traders and artisans who then arrived to do business with them. As landowners, the de Lacy family had a perfectly reasonable financial motive for promoting a market town, one such as, perhaps on their travels, they had seen elsewhere. The building of a town would entail apportioning plots of land for rent for both commercial and domestic purposes, and to make the most of all the land within their set available boundaries. The town would need an open space market area with marked out plots of rentable stalls, this market needed to be surrounded by streets along which there would be rows of plots of land to rent for trading or domestic purposes. Fetch in a town planner. The first part was to map out a long piece of land, stretching from the castle gates to the Corve street track, to be used for the original open trading market area, which made sense as they already had the takers for this in the form of the many traders who had already arrived to do business. This new market town was now very skillfully and carefully planned. It was decided that it should take the form of a grid system that would comprise of main streets with side cross lanes, then there would be measured strips of land abutting them as this would maximize all the available space. A measuring stick called a Rod, Pole or Perch (all the same thing) was used to map out these strips of land, called 'Burgage' plots. In Ludlow the rod used was 16.5 feet long. A standard burgage plots in Ludlow Town was usually 2 rods wide by 18 rods long, but this varied in different areas of town and it was subdivided when land was a premium. As the original Corve street track ran north south so the main streets were formed running north south (Mill street, Broard street, Old street, Corve street and Raven lane) and the cross or service lanes running east west (Brand lane, Bell lane, Silk mill lane, Camp lane and St. John's lane). The Burgage plots had their shorter sides along the street fronts at right angles to these streets, with only a few exceptions. .As most of the original tenants wanted to trade, their buildings abutted the main street whilst the garden for growing food and keeping livestock was behind. As for the buildings first some were stalls, then added cellars and rooms above, still with open rooms at ground level and then filled in walls. Some were pulled down and rebuilt, bits of land changed hands, for some only the cellars are original. Looking at the whole range of history in the buildings around Ludlow Town I do not think I would have it any different.
 

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Tel: 01584 873418
Email: margaret@ludlow-cottage-lets.co.uk

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