The urban form of this area of Thorne has much in common with that of Bawtry to the south with an apparently planned layout of narrow 'burgage plots' radiating from two main streets 'King Street' and 'Queen Street / Finkle Street'. These two streets meet at a market place close to the location of the Church and Market place. Magilton and notes in SMR file 119 consider the area around 'Stone Gate' (to the south of the church) to be the oldest part of the settlement, which was mentioned in Domesday as a minor settlement within Hatfield Parish (Magilton 1977, 73). Later expansion of Thorne appears to have taken place to the south (along the present 'Ellison Street) where a more irregular layout of property boundaries can be discerned from 19th and 20th century map sources. These three historic areas of settlement were all established by the time of Jeffreys' survey of 1774-5. Their area corresponds to an 'island' of sand and gravels raised above the surrounding alluvium which would have been at least seasonally flooded before the drainage improvements of the 17th-19th centuries. Thorne's obviously prosperous market trade would most likely have rested on water-borne trade from the River Don (there were substantial wharves by the early 19th century at Thorne Quay /Thorne Waterside) and the town was linked to both the river and Thorne Moors by the 'Boating Dyke' by at the latest the late 18th century. A good mix of postmedieval buildings survives within this area (see Magilton 1977 for individual descriptions). Some twentieth century clearance and rebuilding.