Discussion:
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Early history of the town
Of the new towns established by Edward in Wales in 1277, Flint was closest to England. Also, Flint occupied a 'greenfield' site, and hence was truly a 'new town' unlike the other two towns established after the first Welsh war, Rhuddlan and Aberystwyth. What it did share with them was its twin military and commercial function of a combined castle and town, situated on a coastal site with access to the sea, the Dee estuary in Flint's case. Even the place-name was new, possibly deriving from the town's site on a sandstone outcrop.[193] With its proximity to Rhuddlan, it is unsurprising that early work on the two places was overseen by the same individuals. William of Perton was keeper of works at both from July 1277, when work began Flint, while later that same year it was Nicholas Bonel who the king appointed as 'surveyor of his works in those parts, both at Le Cheynou [Flint] and at Rothelan [Rhuddlan]', along with Guncelin de Batelesmere, justice of Chester.[194] Perton had in fact set out from the king's court in June to recruit masons from eastern England and take them to Chester, from where, in July, they and others whom the king's clerks had gathered moved forward to a 'camp' on the Dee, the future site of Flint.[195] By the end of the month, 'approximately 1850 workman' were assembled there, and as Arnold Taylor puts it, were 'treated as a military unit', with the various categories of worker - engineers, diggers, carpenters, masons - being 'placed under a knight'.[196] The suggestion is that in this state the royal camp at Flint was simply 'a dispersal centre from which men were sent as needed to other embryo works', for example at Rhuddlan.[197]
On the making of Flint itself, the earliest activity concerned the earthworks needed to defend the site. The work was noted by the Welsh. An entry for the summer months of 1277 in the Brut y Tywysogyon recorded that the king 'fortified a court at Flint with huge ditches around it'.[198] These huge ditches are presumably the double-bank and ditch earthworks shown on John Speed's 1610 map of the town. Royal accounts for August 1277 refer to workmen engaged on ditches at Flint (and Rhuddlan), and early on in the month Master William of March arrived there with 300 diggers from eastern parts of England, men who were no doubt well-used to earthmoving and ditch-digging in draining the fens there.[199] Peter of Brampton, a knight, was responsible for the diggers working at Flint in July and August.[200] Meanwhile, timber was also procured at this time for the castle and probably for a palisade to be built around the site, as was common in other of the king's works of this sort in Wales.[201] So, before the end of the summer, work was advancing at Flint, and during this time it would appear that the circuit of the future town's defences was established. By then the king was based at Rhuddlan, with his clerk William of Perton overseeing as keeper of works both Flint and Rhuddlan.[202] By the late autumn, Nicholas Bonel and Guncelin of Batelesmere were there as the sites' surveyors. After this, early in 1278, the first references to the town at Flint appear.
In February 1278, Guncelin, along with Howel, son of Griffin, were given 'order to cause proclamation to be made that a market shall be held at Flint every week on Thursday', as well as an annual fair.[203] At the same time, the two men along with Bonel were also appointed by the king 'to assess his burgages' at Flint (as well as Rhuddlan), 'and to grant and demise at a fixed rent all his lands in those parts'.[204] The town by then was clearly in existence, presumably with its streets, plots, market and defences. The work on the castle was continuing, but more emphasis appears to have been placed on work at Rhuddlan's castle, at least initially, and only later, in November 1280, did Master James of St George begin working at Flint, and in 1281 'the biggest single advance of any in the progress of the Flint works' took place.[205] In 1282, Master James along with William of Perton were given 'order to deliver to all wishing to have burgages or lands at Flynt one burgage and 40 acres of land', which was to be 'quit of rent for 10 years', after which a burgage rent would be six-pence per year.[206] The long time-period that burgesses would be free of rent suggests that there was a need to attract incomers to take up property there, perhaps signs that the burgages that were being assessed back in February 1278 had not attracted many takers. Burgesses are mentioned in October 1283.[207] Work was also apparently continuing on the defences around the town, for diggers were paid £200 between March 1281 and November 1286 to work on the town's enclosure.[208] Of course it may be that Flint, like nearby Rhuddlan, had suffered in the Welsh attacks of March 1282,[209] and required not only work on its defences but also some help to restore the town's population. Curiously, Flint does not get a 'charter of liberties' at the same time that Rhuddlan does, in November 1278, but only receives a charter, making it a 'free borough', in September 1284, when Rhuddlan likewise is given this status.[210] Are we seeing, then, two distinct attempts to get Flint off the ground as a town, one taking place in early 1278, and then a second in 1282? With the emphasis of castle-building switching more to Rhuddlan at this time, and with Edward's aspirations for Rhuddlan, perhaps Flint in 1278 was a less attractive looking proposition to would-be burgesses when compared with its near-neighbour. Indeed, this unevenness in the early development of the two towns may also be reflected in the fewer contemporary records of Flint compared with Rhuddlan, with the consequence that 'we cannot trace in such detail the settlement of Flint by the English'.[211]
If 1282 had been a difficult time for Flint, then more trouble was in store, for in the war of 1294-5 the town was damaged again. A letter sent from the burgesses to the king in 1296-7 records what happened: 'in the last war in Wales, the town of Flynt was burnt at the order of Sir Reginald de Grey for the safety of the castle, so that the Welsh could not have possession to do harm to the castle, and their goods and chattels were therefore destroyed', the damages amounting to £300.[212] What is more, the burgesses complained in another letter of the same date, 'the king's Welsh villeins have bought land in the town and bake and brew, contrary to their charter and their custom'.[213] It seems, though, that the damage caused by the Welsh was more to do with the burgesses' moveable wealth, rather than their landed property and houses, and that any necessary rebuilding of houses would be undertaken by the burgesses themselves. Just previously, in 1292, the town had seventy-six taxpayers, similar to Rhuddlan, and also paying about the same sum.[214] By the early fourteenth century, in the years between 1301 and 1306 for example, the royal exchequer was receiving just over £36 per annum in rents from the 'vill of Flint', slightly more than it got from Rhuddlan.[215] The actual number of burgages rented at Flint is not known, and neither is there a rental listing either the burgesses or their property. Flint's early development in the first few decades after 1277 therefore appears to be characterised by somewhat slow and erratic growth, in terms of both population and prosperity, even though the place had a market operating from very early on, and despite burgages being made ready for occupants only six months or so after the site was first occupied by Edward's men in the summer of 1277.
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Design and plan of the town
With its very regular layout, Flint has long been held up as an example par excellence of a medieval new town.[216] The town consists of six longitudinal streets in parallel, all of which are almost perfectly straight, with one, Church Street/Castle Street, wider than the others. Running across these streets at ninety degrees, and placed not quite halfway along them, is one single street, the main Chester-Holywell road. On either side of Church Street/Castle Street, this cross-street broadens out to form two adjoining squares. Here John Speed's map of 1610 shows there to be a town hall, or guild hall, and what appears to be stocks and gallows opposite. The two squares presumably represent the site of the town's market that was proclaimed by Guncelin and Howel in February 1278.[217] The castle is situated at the opposite end of the town to the church of St Mary, with the market in between.[218] This is a common arrangement for new towns of the middle ages. Encompassing the whole town, and set out in a near-perfect rectangular shape, were the defences, again shown by Speed's map, and subsequently preserved in outline by the later street-pattern of Nailor's Row and Duke Street. The town's defences linked with the castle moat, though perhaps not in the rather curious way that Speed suggests.[219] However, his depiction of the town defences as a double bank and ditch is evidently accurate, and the parallel between the arrangement of Flint's and Rhuddlan's earthwork defences has been noted.[220] Considering this stylistic similarity, and the supporting documentary evidence that work on the ditches at Flint began in the summer of 1277 (as at Rhuddlan), it would seem that this circuit originates from Flint's very beginning. This has implications for interpreting when the streets and plots within these defences were laid out.
If the town's rectangular-shaped defences were being dug from the start, it would seem likely that their contents, the layout of the town's plan, was also conceived at the same time. Gaps in the circuit necessary for streets to pass through would have to have been decided upon at this early stage, so it follows that the street-plan itself was decided upon then too, at least the two main axial streets that form a cross-shape. The presence of actual gates at these points is not attested, but would seem likely, and perhaps some of the timber known to be being used for construction at Flint in August 1277 was to provide not just a surrounding palisade but also appropriately-positioned gateways.[221] There are other more subtle signs that the town's street pattern was laid out early on. The alignment of Church Street, the main longitudinal street, is not placed in the middle of the rectangle formed by the town's defences but is instead offset slightly to the north. This means that Church Street is not aligned on the town's central axis. In fact, no street is. Rather, the central axis of the town is formed by an imagined line drawn from the centre of the circular donjon of the castle at one end of the town through to the church of St Mary's at the other. The overall symmetry of the town-plan, with three streets on either side of this central axis, therefore seems to have been thought out not only in relation to the rectangular outline of the town's defensive circuit but also with regard to the placing of the donjon and church.[222] Castle and town are thus conceived was one single design, set out on the ground along a common axis which existed only in the mind of the designer who wished to produce a symmetrical plan. Their thinking is accessible today through 'reverse-engineering' from the surviving features that formed the town, and suggests that both town and castle were planned out together as a whole at the same time. If so, who might have been responsible?
As with Rhuddlan, there are a number of individuals involved on the ground at Flint in 1277-8 who could have designed and laid out both the town and castle. The early date of the work carried on the site, as far as the castle and town ditches were concerned, would suggest the design was decided perhaps in July or August 1277, at least in its overall layout. This matter of timing would place perhaps William of Perton as an influence, rather than Nicholas Bonel. But if it was Perton (who was also responsible for overseeing work at Rhuddlan), why is it that the plans of the two towns are so different in layout? The suggestion has also been made that Edward himself was influential, perhaps having taken inspiration from Aigues-Mortes, from where he departed for the Crusades in 1270, a royal-founded new town likewise rectangular in its overall form, though that's where their similarities in plan end.[223] The Tour de Constance at Aigues-Mortes has also been used to explain the 'one of the most puzzling features of any of the Welsh castles', the cylindrical donjon at Flint, itself offset from the keep.[224] The street-plan at Flint is quite distinctive, however. It is not matched in plan by any of Edward's other new towns in Wales, with the exception perhaps of Holt, also close to the English border. It is also orthogonal in layout, a form rarely encountered elsewhere in new towns of the thirteenth century in England and Wales, even when compared to cases such as Winchelsea and New Salisbury.[225]
No doubt Edward was involved to some degree in the planning of Flint - he was close at hand at nearby Rhuddlan during August - but whether he had a direct hand in urban design seems unlikely. The task was one more suited to one of his clerks or someone overseeing the works. In this regard, especially considering his early presence at Flint and involvement in digging work, including the town's defences, Master William of March is a possible candidate. He was there in August leading diggers on the ground, and presumably had experience in matters of working out how to make earthworks, in this case to encompass a new town. Unlike Perton, he does not appear to have been involved at Rhuddlan, where similar work was going on, which may explain the differences in layout between these two neighbouring and contemporary new towns. Later, in 1280, he became cofferer in the king's household, and then rose up to become keeper of the wardrobe.[226] But if the plan was developed by March, why was it that the double-bank-and-ditch defences at Flint were also present at Rhuddlan? Why, too, were the two towns orientated on the same alignment? Such similarities may point to a common hand at Flint and Rhuddlan, with perhaps two 'experts' on site, one a ditch-maker and the other a town planner/surveyor. There were, of course, numerous men around at Flint in July and August 1277, for this was a mustering post for the king's forces, a 'camp' occupied by miscellaneous workers, overseen by knights such as Peter of Brampton and others. So disentangling one individual from so many, at this crucial time, is perhaps not altogether feasible, and the exact author or authors of the design at Flint will remain tantalisingly hidden.
That the town was ready and finished by February 1278 is evident from the proclamation of the market there, as well as the appointment of Guncelin and Howel, together with Nicholas Bonel, to assess burgages. The proclamation must post-date the market place, and since the market place is integral to the town's plan they must both pre-date it. The plots that formed burgages similarly may have already been set out in between the longitudinal streets that they fronted. No standard burgage size is recorded for Flint, and measurement of plot-frontages in 2004 failed to reveal the dimensions of the original plots.[227] Unlike the plots at Rhuddlan, those at Flint are much more regular and ordered in appearance, though with Flint's apparently slow development from the very start it might be expected that plot boundaries were changed, not least after the burning of the town in 1294-5. Again, this is a curious anomaly. The widths of the street-blocks probably determined the depths of the plots, and these are fairly consistent, ranging between 100 and 125 feet in the western part of the town (30m-38m).[228] The long narrow street-blocks containing the plots in effect provided each with two street-frontages and this would have helped enable burgesses to sub-divide their burgages, a lucrative proposition since they could then more easily rent out parts of their property. Whoever came up with this renumerative design presumably had their eye not only on the aesthetics of the town's symmetry but also on how best to make a town economically attractive. Such a person may well have been financially astute, someone with accounting skills, William of March perhaps?
The plan of Flint is often alikened to the bastides of south-west France, and parallels are drawn between Edward's new towns of Gascony and north Wales.[229] The connections that some of the king's clerks in Wales, such as William Louth and William March, had with Gascony have been used to support these comparisons.[230] In its details however, the layout of Flint looks unlike even the contemporary 'English' bastides of Monpazier, Molières, and Beaumont du Périgord of the Agenais in Dordogne.[231] As with Aigues-Mortes, similarities are only superficial, the towns generally having overall rectangular forms, and in some cases parallel series of longitudinal streets.[232] Flint provides some insight, however, into the process of medieval urban design, for its plan seems to have been carefully worked out first, perhaps even drawn on parchment, and then accurately and precisely laid out on the ground. This must have required some expertise, perhaps even practical knowledge of how to use and apply geometry. One curious item of expenditure was incurred early on in the work in summer 1277. This concerned 'tables [tabule] for the construction of the castle', which Arnold Taylor suggests were for 'the setting out of the positions of the castle walls and towers'.[233] Could it be that they were a kind of plane table used in surveying angles?[234] Something must have ensured that Flint's layout was kept perfectly geometrical in shape.
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The town as it is today
The precisely laid-out plan of Flint was torn in half in the mid-nineteenth century by the construction of the Chester to Holyhead railway and construction of Flint station. In the 1960s this was then compounded by housing schemes being developed within the medieval street-blocks, resulting in high rise tower-blocks being built in the south-west part of the defended town. This has decimated any archaeology and altered the character of Flint. No remains of the rectangular-shaped defensive circuit exist, bar the street-pattern that fossilises its outline. The castle is a public park, landscaped and with a few standing remains available for inspection, including the circular donjon. It is overall an unattractive town, with congested roads and no surviving buildings earlier than the eighteenth century, except for the castle of course. Even the parish church of St Mary's was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century.[235] On the ground, therefore, little can be gleaned today of the town's original medieval layout, making early maps and plans of the place all the more valuable for what they reveal of Flint's interesting and remarkable design. The population of Flint in 2001 stood at around 10,000, including its outlying modern housing estates.
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References:
- Beresford, New Towns, p.39; Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.17, note 6. Flint means 'rock' in Old English.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.19, citing PRO: E 372/124, rot. 29; CWR, p.160, see also p.165.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.17, citing PRO: E 101/350/26, E 101/3/19; CPR 1272-81, p.213.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.17. 2300 men were present by the end of August (p.18).
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.18. They also went to castle building projects at Builth and Ruthin.
- Brut y Tywysogyon, ed. T. Jones, p.267.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.18, citing PRO: E 372/123, rot. 23.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.49, citing PRO: E 101/485/19.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.18-19.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.19.
- CWR, p.165.
- CWR, p.165.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.19-21. Between August 1277 and December 1286, £6068 7s 5¾d was spent on the castle and town defences (p.25). See also See J.G. Edwards, 'The building of Flint', Journal of the Flintshire Historical Society 12 (1951), pp.9-10.
- CClR 1279-88, p.172.
- CPR 1281-92, p.82.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.18, note 3.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.30.
- CChR 1257-1300, pp.209, 277.
- Flintshire Ministers' Accounts, 1301-1328, ed. Jones, p.xl.
- Calendar of Ancient Petitions, ed. Rees, p.177.
- Calendar of Ancient Petitions, ed. Rees, p.178.
- Beresford, New Towns, p.550.
- Flintshire Ministers' Accounts, 1301-1328, ed. Jones, p.100.
- Eg. T.F. Tout, Mediaeval Town Planning, a lecture (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1934), p.18; Beresford. New Towns, p.39. Often wrongly called a 'Welsh bastide': A.E.J. Morris, History of Urban Form (Longman, Harlow, 1979), p.103.
- CWR, p.165.
- The church is mentioned in the 1291 Taxatio as a chapelry of Northrop parish. See RCAHMW, Flint, p.28.
- See J.G. Edwards, 'Building of Flint', figure 2; also O.E. Craster, 'The supposed outer ditch of Flint castle', Journal of the Flintshire Historical Society 22 (1965-6), p.71; RCAHMW, Flint, p.29.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.18; H. Quinnell, M.R. Blockley and P. Berridge, Excavations at Rhuddlan, Clwyd 1969-73, Mesolithic to Medieval, CBA Research Report 95 (1994), Excavations, pp.219-20; see also Medieval Archaeology 16 (1971), p.192.
- See Taylor, Welsh Castles, pp.18-19.
- A chapel at Flint is first recorded in 1291, while work on the Great Tower of the castle is attested by 1281. Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.21, also see p.25, note 4. Their positions were presumably planned for from the start.
- Beresford, New Towns, p.40; A. Lauret, R, Malebranche and G. Séraphin, Bastides. Villes nouvelles du moyen-age (éditions Milan, Toulouse, 1988), pp.178-181. Aigues-Mortes was founded as a royal town in the 1240s.
- Prestwich, Edward I, p.211. On the donjon see also Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.25, note 4; D.J.C. King, 'The donjon of Flint', Journal of the Chester and North Wales Architectural, Archaeological and Historical Society 45 (1958), pp.61-9.
- Two other new towns often compared to Flint, see Tout, Mediaeval Town Planning.
- Tout, Chapters in Administrative History, ii, pp.13, 21.
- The survey data is accessible via 'Data downloads'.
- Some of the streets have been lost due to redevelopment making field-measurement difficult.
- Tout, Mediaeval Town Planning, p.18; Beresford, New Towns, p.40.
- Tout, Chapters in Administrative History, ii, pp.64-7.
- For plans of these places see Lauret et al, Bastides, pp.66-7, 283.
- For example, Beaumont du Périgord.
- Taylor, Welsh Castles, p.19. Taylor notes the tables were bought mainly from archers, and suggests they were targets.
- On early-modern plane tables, see R.T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, vol. 1, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Surveying (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923), p.371. No medieval examples are known.
- See RCAHMW, Flint, p,28. For more on Flint's historic monuments see www.coflein.gov.uk
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