The plan form of this area retains significant legibility of the burgage series described by Slater's town plan analysis of the medieval core of Doncaster (in Buckland 1989, 53). This plan unit consisted of long, regularly divided narrow plots of land with buildings initially along the frontage of the main road (formerly a Roman road). This plan form, in common with similar developments in other towns, is commonly assumed to be a result of centrally organised planning requiring an element of compulsion and/or cooperation in order to mitigate against the re-arrangement of earlier properties. Slater deduces from early plans of the town that the series to the east of High Street was truncated at the time of the planning of the market place and its surrounding burgages c.1200, which would mean that the laying out of these plots would date to the 12th century or earlier. Further truncation of the original layout can be inferred at the back-lands of the series to the west of High Street, (the approximate areas of HSY 5824, 5823) where the Carmelite Friary was established by 1346. This area is characterised by open areas on most of the historic maps of the area until its development as 'Priory Place' (HSY 5823) in the 19th century. The current built character includes hotels, inns, banks and shop-fronts dating to the 19th and 20th centuries including a number of listed buildings. Significant legibility remains of traditional plot boundaries. Substantial areas of the plot series that until the mid twentieth century formed a coherent unit of urban character to either side of French Gate / High Street have been separately characterised due to clearance and redevelopment include ) HSY5798 - cleared partially in the early 20th century and finally c.1986 in advance of the construction of a grocery superstore; HSY5800 cleared during the 1960s and 1970s for the development of the Trafford Way, North Bridge Rd, Church Way inner relief road segments; HSY5799; cleared in the mid - late twentieth century for the construction of the bus station (redeveloped and enlarged 2006 as 'Frenchgate Interchange'; HSY5804 cleared from the late 1960s through to the 1980s for development of the 'Arndale Centre' (now renamed 'Frenchgate'); and the smaller areas of HSY5815, HSY5824 and HSY5825 where historic plot boundaries have been erased by wholesale late twentieth and early twenty first century retail and office developments.