How is medieval towns dif ferent from modern cities?

Answer 1

A hamlet was just a collection of houses and other buildings. It did not have a church.

A village was between a hamlet and a town in size and importance.

The thing that distinguished a village from a hamlet was that the village had a church.

There were several things that distinguished a village from a town.

• A village had no mayor or town hall
• A village might have an inn, a pub, or a blacksmith, but would have no regularly open market
• A village had no more than one church
• A village was surrounded entirely by fields and forest.

A town nearly always had a permanent market. The presence of a permanent market was usually allowed only by royal charter. If you read of England only having eight towns in the time of William the Conqueror, what this really means is that at that time he had only given eight royal charters to towns for markets. It is sometimes taken to mean that only eight town sized settlements existed, which is wrong.

A city was the site of a cathedral. It was usually larger than a town, but this was not part of the definition. Later, a city could have a charter to be a city even though there was no cathedral, and this simply meant that the city had certain privileges of cities.

Answer 2

in the ages the king had land. he gave land to lords and knights in exchange for loyalty and taxes. they help pheasants to work on the farm. the MANOR WAS SELf-SUFFICIENT IT HAD EVERYTHING NEEDED. the towns were made because when people felt safe they ventured out of the manor and made trading stands. more and more people came. the TOWN WAS NOT SELF-SUFFICIENT IT GOT FROM THE MANOR

Answer 3

The main difference was the focus of the economy. In villages the primary occupation was agriculture, such as farming and herding, but also sometimes fishing and on occasion non-agricultural activities such as mining. The residents of villages were a mix of serfs and free men, and most were engaged at least part time in agricultural actives of some sort. A village typically did have a few craftsmen and specialists, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, millers, and the village priest, but the majority of the population made a living by agriculture.

Towns, on the other had, were focused on trade, crafts, and manufacture. A town had a marketplace with regular market days. More of the residents in towns were free compared to villages, and a much larger number were craftsmen, merchants, or in the employ of the same. The residents of the villages would travel to nearby towns (most villages were withing a day's travel of a market town) to sell their surplus produce and animals and to purchase goods that they could not make for themselves or get from the few craftsmen of the village.

Villages had a population of anywhere from 50 to 1000 people, but a typical size would probably around 300. Towns could be larger, but were not always so. The smallest towns were smaller than the larger villages, but some towns developed into urban centers with thousands, or on very rare occasion tens of thousands of inhabitants.

Answer 4

life was different in middle ages since it was the middles ages and in manor well, it was the manor!

Answer 5

Um... Yes. Medieval towns had castles and town squares and nights and houses that were not modern looking. Look up medieval house if you need to know more about how it looked.