Sandwich - Helen Clarke

To the casual visitor of today, Sandwich appears as simply a
small inland market town on the bank of a modest river. But
locals and historians have long known that in the Middle Ages it
was a strategic and commercial seaport of great significance,
trading with northern Europe and the Mediterranean and growing
prosperous on this business. The medieval fabric of the town has been preserved to a
remarkable extent, but historians and archaeologists have never
agreed on quite where the first settlement was located. Nor has
there been close study of what the surviving medieval buildings
can tell us about Sandwich's development. It is the physical development of Sandwich that forms the focus
of this volume, providing new theories on how, when and why the
town came to take its present form. As well as providing a great
amount of detail on the houses, churches and defences of medieval
Sandwich, the authors apply the material evidence in order to
draw out important social, economic and cultural facets in the
evolution of the town. The study of Sandwich also has much wider implications, as
despite being largely affected by its location, it also shared
much with other English medieval towns in terms of its physical
growth and the role of its major institutions. The story of the
town, therefore, is both particular and general, and this
detailed study gives new insights into the influences affecting
urban development, both in the formative period of growth and in
later periods in which towns adapted to new circumstances. The
method presented here could therefore, be equally applicable to studies of
other medieval towns. Maps, plans and photographs, all in full
colour, supplement the text and graphically underline many of the
conclusions.