The site of Lynn stood at the south-eastern tip of the great estuary
known as the
Wash; it had more direct access to the Wash than it does today,
after centuries of silting and land reclamation. The light soils of
the countryside to the east were suitable for raising sheep, which
provided the fertilizer for growing cereals such as barley, wheat and rye.
To the west, the rich, heavy soil of the Fenland supported sheep and cattle
and therefore dairy products. Lynn's location represented a convergence of
road, river and sea routes. The Little Ouse
river ran south from Lynn and, before it turned westwards, was connected
to the Great Ouse and thereby the Nene (which two served
several inland counties) via artificial channels. At the same time,
the site was close to several important land routes, including the major
east-west route across the northern fens, which led into northern Lynn.
These linkages into the rich agricultural hinterland of the Fens, western
Norfolk and the east Midlands, and (in the other direction) to the ports
of northern Europe, put it in a good position to become a trading centre.
The town now known as King's Lynn was, in medieval times, rather
Bishop's Lynn. This is because it was taken under the wing of the
Bishop
of Norwich in the late eleventh century, one of the earliest
of numerous deliberate seigneurial foundations of
"new towns" that took place between
that time and the mid-thirteenth century. When Henry VIII took over
the lordship of the town it was renamed King's Lynn.
The name "Lynn" derives from a Celtic term meaning "pool", referring
to the fact that it was part of an estuary lake where various rivers
flowed into the Wash. This lake was surrounded by earth banks and
the site of Lynn sat at the narrow neck leading from the estuarine
lake into the Wash; this was a likely crossing point of the
estuary – an ancient ferry right was located here – and here too
the channel would have been deep enough to accommodate ships. The
sea bank had contributed to silting and the formation of salt marshes.
So many of the local settlers were harvesting the salt through saltpans
in the neighbourhood of Lynn, as scattered references in the
Domesday book reveal, that a trade
surplus must have been produced. The salt was attached to sand and the
separation process resulted in piles of discarded sand; this process
having been going on for centuries, it was a major factor in raising
the level of the land above the marsh, to the point where it became
possible to build on the often quite sizable waste heaps thus created.
Many of these saltern mounds are still
visible today. The same process of reclamation left the site riddled
with watercourses (locally called "fleets", from the Anglo-Saxon term
meaning creek) ranging in size from streams to small rivers,
and the course of these likewise exercised an influence
on the topography of settlement.
At this time there seem to have been people living in all of the areas
that later became West Lynn (on the far side of the river), North Lynn,
Bishop's Lynn, and South Lynn, and the last was sufficiently populous to
be considered a village. However, it was apparently traders who
were tenants of the Bishop's nearby manor of Gaywood (where many other
saltpans were located) who in about 1095 requested that he found a town
endowed with commercial privileges and with its own parish church.
Probably they were already holding an unofficial market there by the
waterside, and some may even have been residing there. The industry
producing salt, which was important for the curing of meat and fish,
would itself have attracted traders; and the reclaimed fenland was
suitable for sheep-farming and agriculture, which made for trade in wool
and grain, while fishing was also likely an early source of
trade goods.
The Bishop complied with this request, at the same time founding
St. Margaret's church to serve the
community; attached to St. Margaret's was a small priory. The northern
and southern bounds of this new town were two tidal fleets that were wide
enough to be navigable and had been the sites of salting operations at some
time; they were later known as Purfleet and
Millfleet, respectively. They provided
an added advantage to Lynn as a site attracting trade, since the fleets
offered a sheltered anchorage for ships carrying visiting merchants. The
western boundary was the location of the weekly market, held each Saturday
on the water's edge – it being described as a "sand market" (perhaps
implying the site was partly underwater at high tide, a ploy to avoid
having to pay market tolls to the king) – while an annual three-day fair,
beginning on St. Margaret's day, was authorized (or, more likely,
confirmed). The eastern boundary was the sea bank. The priory-church
was built on the edge of the Saturday Market.
In 1101 the Bishop transferred St. Margaret's to the jurisdiction of the
monastic priory of Norwich cathedral. There was already a church
(All
Saints) established in South Lynn, which was similarly transferred.
Early building in Lynn seems to have focused along the
river-bank north of the market and
perhaps even more so in the area east of the market and priory;
by mid-century the population in the latter area had become
heavy enough to warrant founding
St.
James' Chapel in that easterly quarter. A public
quay – the Bishop's Staith – was built
at the point where Purfleet entered the river.
By establishing a town and helping develop its facilities, the Bishop
could hope to increase his own revenues – from such sources as tolls,
rents, building licences, and court fines – as a result of the
stimulation of local commerce and increased settlement on the site
that the commerce would in turn stimulate. We cannot ignore the possibility
that the foundation was part of a larger policy of Bishop Herbert de Losinga,
of which the contemporaneous transfer of the episcopal see from Thetford
to Norwich and the attention paid
to Yarmouth may have been other components.
By mid-century the population had increased to the point where settlement
had spread north of the Purfleet, facilitated by the presence of a
bridge across the fleet; part of the
population expansion was due to the introduction of a Jewish community,
which was the target of attacks in 1190, perhaps mainly from foreigners in
Lynn. The Bishop treated this secondary area of settlement like a separate
town, confirming (ca.1146-50) to the settlers on this "new land" a market
(on Tuesdays) and fair they had probably already established, and founding
the
chapel
of St. Nicholas there to provide for the spiritual life of
the residents of this northern section of Lynn. This Newland he kept
under his direct jurisdiction. A second
bridge was subsequently built further east.
This second "new town" was bounded by Purfleet on the south and the
River Gay to the north. If planned,
the layout may have envisaged a parallel series of roughly evenly-spaced
north-south roads, cross-cut by Damgate,
and with the market absorbing the northwest corner adjacent to the river;
but more likely the lines of roads were already dictated by existing
residences. It was perhaps the anchorage in the mouth of the River Gay
that had encouraged the growth of this market nearby, which in turn
attracted settlement. There were lesser fleets connected to the Gay, in
part by canals dug by the settlers, and here several staiths are known to
have been located. A mill for grinding
the townspeople's corn was built by the Bishop and served by another such
channel. Before the end of the Middle Ages, the
Common Staith had been established on
the river-bank at the
Tuesday
Market, although originally the whole of the bank there was likely a
landing place for ships. The Bishop's steward administered justice and
collected tolls from a hall in the
marketplace; court sessions were held each Monday. At the southern end of
the marketplace were temporary booths where visitors and residents could
buy the medieval equivalent of "fast food"; in time these booths
evolved into permanent buildings. As land was reclaimed from the river,
the western side of the market, facing the river, similarly came to be
occupied by buildings; this was likewise the case with the Saturday
marketplace.
Just as the small market settlements pre-existing the episcopal
"foundations" in both central Lynn and the Newland mitigate against
calling Lynn a "planted town", it might
also be going too far to suggest that Lynn was a
"planned town". Although some features were
doubtless the result of forethought, the topography of the site was
a great influence on the evolution of the layout of the town. This
was determined partly by stretches of raised ground (the product of
silting and salting) west of the sea bank and to a lesser extent by
the firm banks of the fleets, both of which provided natural locations
for roads; and partly by the need to connect east-west land routes
and the points where ships could load or unload goods. However, it was
the north-south road connecting the
Saturday and Tuesday markets, thanks in part to the original bridge
over the Purfleet, that was the focus for settlement.
History of
medieval Lynn
