This area lies within one of the areas of earliest development in Sheffield City Centre being within the probable area of the planned medieval settlement. The Gosling plan of 1736 shows the area including a large area desiccated to various markets (principally in the east of this unit to the south of the site of Sheffield Castle on the probable site of the Castle Yard), and settlement with a probable planned medieval layout of burgage plots along High Street and Market Place which included a number of small mews type lanes running at right angles to the main thoroughfares. By the end of the 19th century OS mapping shows that most of the markets area had been covered by Victorian market halls, whilst many small buildings survived to the west (Picturesheffield.com shows at least 1 timber framed medieval building in this area). The early 20th century seems to have seen an intensification in commercial redevelopment with a number of large buildings and department stores appearing on High Street and Angel Street including early twentieth century C and A and Co-op stores. Much damage was inflicted in the tragic air raids of 12th-13th December 1940 including the loss of the C and A store and the Marples Hotel where 70 people who had taken shelter in the building's cellars died of suffocation following the buildings burning and collapse. Comprehensive redevelopment since 1945 involved the reconstruction of the markets area (currently under redevelopment) and reconstruction of the area around the present Castle Square as large multi storey department stores. Castle Square itself was created as a central hub to the district and town centre in the late 1960s and formed a nodal roundabout to the city's never completed 'Civic Circle'. The roundabout, which featured a central sunken shopping arcade and fish tank accessed by subways, was known ironically to the people of Sheffield as 'The Hole in t' Road', filled in in 1994. 'Arundel Gate' to its south was driven directly through the former burgage plot layout. Only fragments of the medieval layout survive to give fragmentary legibility of the medieval plan.