The Economics Of Owning A Medieval Castle Town

The Economics of Owning a Medieval Castle Town | What the Walls Actually Cost Caernarfon's castle and town walls cost Edward I somewhere in the region of twenty thousand pounds. The burgesses inside them paid a ground rent of roughly one shilling a year each. On those numbers, the town pays for itself in about two thousand years. So why did hundreds of lords across Europe keep founding them? Because the rent was never the product. We open a planted medieval town and cost it out properly: the charter that suspended feudal law inside the walls, the deliberately narrow burgage plots and why frontage was the scarce commodity, the market monopoly with a legal radius, the tolls and stallage and piccage collected at the gate, and murage, the medieval infrastructure tax that made outsiders pay for the townsmen's walls. Chapters: 00:00 The sum that doesn't work 02:45 You're issuing a constitution, not building a town 05:45 Site selection and the only thing that matters 08:30 Laying out the plots 11:30 Revenue, line by line 15:00 The wall that eats everything 18:00 Risk 20:30 The document that ends your ownership 22:00 Verdict: who actually got rich #MedievalHistory #CastleTown #MedievalEconomy #EconomicHistory #EdwardI #WelshCastles #Caernarfon #Bastide #MedievalTowns #HistoryDocumentary #MiddleAges #Burgage #MedievalTrade #Salisbury #OldSarum #Winchelsea #MedievalWales #UrbanHistory #MarketTown #HistoryExplained #MedievalLife #TownWalls #Monpazier #KingstonUponHull #HistoryFacts SOURCE WEBSITES and Reading: 1. British History Online — borough charters, town rentals, market grants and calendared crown records 2. The National Archives (UK) — charter rolls, patent rolls and murage grants 3. Gatehouse Gazetteer — bibliographic and documentary records for castles and town defences in England and Wales 4. Historic England Research Records — survey and excavation evidence for planted towns and burgage plots 5. Cadw — the Welsh historic environment service, on the Edwardian castle and borough programme 6. Internet Medieval Sourcebook (Fordham University) — translated town charters and urban liberties 7. Medievalists.net — accessible summaries of current academic research on medieval urbanisation