Space, Property, and Propriety in Urban England

Abstract

The public space in medieval towns and cities was shaped and influenced by the private spaces that surrounded it. The private was, like the public, a complex domain; many interests coexisted there. The pressures of population gowth and commercial development fragmented individual holdings and created overlapping layers of claims to particular spaces. Neighbors' interests also impinged; the enjoyment of the private was far from exclusive. Elaborate codes of property rights and legal procedures evolved as a fundamental part of urban custom. When the property market declined in the later Middle Ages, however, practices changed, and new ways of defining and describing private property emerged.