Medieval Market Square

The market square is an open square meant for trading, where market stalls are traditionally set out for trading, commonly on one particular day of the week known as market day. Being centrally located, town squares are usually surrounded by small shops such as bakeries, meat markets, cheese stores, and clothing stores. At their center is often a well, monument, statue or other feature. Those with fountains are sometimes called fountain squares.

Weekly markets and fairs were the main way in which medieval people bought and sold goods. In larger towns there could be a market on every day of the week, except Sunday. Markets were held in large open spaces, often in front of a church, and the roads around it were made as wide as possible to allow carts to pass one another coming and going.

Farmers and craftsmen from the countryside would take their goods into the towns to sell at the markets. Shop keepers in the towns had to shut their own shops on market days and sell from the stalls. In towns in the Middle Ages there were a host of craftsmen such as carpenters, bakers, butchers, blacksmiths, bronze smiths, fletchers (arrow makers), bowyers (bow makers), potters, coopers, and barber-surgeons who both cut hair and pulled teeth. Often craftsmen of the same kind lived in the same street. In villages, towns, and large cities which had been granted the privilege of a license to do so by their monarch, markets were regularly held in public squares (or sometimes triangles), in wide streets or even in purpose-built halls. Markets were also organised just outside many castles and monasteries.