Bromsgrove, United Kingdom

Bromsgrove is sited at the centre of a very large parish, with its church, St John the Baptist, standing at a prominent point in the local landscape. Bromsgrove, along with all the towns in north Worcestershire, was committed to defending the city of Worcester, and is recorded to have contributed burgesses to Droitwich in 1086. There may also have been Anglo-Saxon or Norman fortifications in Bromsgrove, but no archaeological evidence remains outside the literature.

Bromsgrove and the surrounding area was put under forest law when the boundaries of Feckenham Forest were extended hugely by Henry II. Forest law was removed from the Bromsgrove area in 1301 in the reign of Edward I, when the boundaries were moved back.

Bromsgrove was one of the smallest urban settlements in the county, and had no formal status as a borough. A market day was first granted in 1200; however, even at this time, there is little record of an urban settlement. Later, in the 1230s, Henry III arranged that the rectory manor of St. John was transferred to Worcester Priory, to support the remembrance of his father King John, who was buried there. This meant that the town which grew up around this period was divided between two jurisdictions and landlords, the royal manor in the east, and the rectory manor controlled by Worcester Priory in the west. The division ran along the High Street. Nevertheless, records show no sign of an urban settlement in 1240–1250. New initiatives to establish a market took place in 1250, and Bromsgrove residents appear in the tax records by 1275.

The town appears to have been founded as a series of plots of sizes between two and four rods (10 and 20 m), marked out along the current High Street. These plots can still be discerned today, in the sizes of the frontages of the buildings. The road entering Bromsgrove from the west appears to have been diverted to ensure that it met Bromsgrove at the furthest point north, forcing travellers to pass south through the whole High Street if intending to continue west.

The town probably benefited from the growth of the local agricultural population in the early medieval period, which began to establish new farmland in places like Stoke Prior and Hanbury through assarting (creating clearings in) Feckenham Forest. Similarly, the number of minor aristocratic, gentry and ecclesiastical estates grew, which would have needed to buy and sell goods. Hanbury alone had six manor houses and two granges in the 1200s. The Priory Manor itself would have been a potential customer, as would Grafton Manor just south of the town. Nevertheless, not all the local trade would have passed directly through Bromsgrove, as the Priory for instance would often take locally produced goods directly to Droitwich or Worcester, or purchase them directly at other larger centres with particular specialisms.

In 1317, it was given the right hold a Tuesday market and three-day fair every 29 August at the Decollation of St. John the Baptist. The market place and tollhouse were located at the junction of St. John Street and the High Street. Its market was especially used by the surrounding area to sell surplus oats, which were increasingly produced in the area, while wheat was grown in southern Worcestershire. The area was known for the high quality of its pigs.

Common trades can be traced from surnames in this period, and included in the years to 1327 bakers, tanners, carpenters, drapers, dyers, butchers, masons, smiths, shoemakers and fullers. The town had a large number of tanneries and cloth was also produced. Tanneries and breweries were located on the Priory manor side of the town, with access to the Spadesbourne brook. This created significant problems of pollution.

Bromsgrove benefited from sales to travellers, for instance of beer, bread, horsebread, meat and cheese. Brewing and selling ale seems to have been predominantly done by women in Bromsgrove, perhaps to supplement the main income of the household. Between 22 and 29 people are recorded in the 1300s at the Court Leet paying 'fines' for selling ale for more than the fixed price; this seems to have been applied in effect as a tax. Women were able to hold property, sometimes as widows or jointly with their husbands, and owned up to 10% of Bromsgrove's plots at various times.

After the Black Death, the social structure of the Bromsgrove's hinterland changed. Farms tended to merge and become larger, and moved from producing crops to raising livestock. This resulted in higher value goods like wool, leather and meat being sold through Bromsgrove's market and contributed to the town's prosperity in the later Middle Ages. The town's population would have fell, but can still be estimated as around 400 in the later 1300s. The aftermath of the Black Death also caused traders to attempt to hike their prices, which the courts attempted to suppress.