page_title: History of Medieval Cumbria
section_title: Urban centres
hierarchical_section_title: History of Medieval Cumbria / Life in medieval Cumbria / Urban centres
caption_attribution_description: English: Tile Tower, also known as King Richard III tower, between Irish Gate and Castle. (Grade 1 Listed)
context_page_description: The history of medieval Cumbria has several points of interest. The region's status as a borderland coping with 400 years of warfare is one. The attitude of the English central government, at once uninterested and deeply interested, is another. As a border region, of geopolitical importance, Cumbria changed hands between the Angles, Norse, Strathclyde Brythons, Picts, Normans, Scots and English; and the emergence of the modern county is also worthy of study.
context_section_description: Medieval Carlisle was almost an entity apart from the rest of the region, given its two Roman forts (one roughly covering the southern portion of the present Castle, and the other at Stanwix). Archaeological evidence for the Medieval period is scarce. However, it seems that Carlisle fits in with the picture elsewhere - for example, the largest period of abandonment of the forts took place during Roman times. Carlisle became a royal estate and was given to Saint Cuthbert in the 7th-century and the focus of life in the town shifted from the fort sites to that around the future Cathedral and nearby Saint Cuthbert's Church. There is no evidence that the civil settlement (as opposed to the forts) was walled. However, with the coming of the Normans and the building of the castle, this changed. In 1168, the Castle's walls and the town's walls (provided by Henry I) were joined together and the town settlement became, in effect, part of the defences of the Castle, running through various "gates" such as Caldewgate, southwards to Botchergate and returning northwards via Rickergate to the eastern wall of the Castle. Several towers were built along the city walls, one of which, the Tile Tower, still survives.
  After a relatively peaceful 13th-century, Carlisle came under repeated attack from the Scots from 1296 onwards and the professional soldiers based in the Castle and the city townsfolk together would repel besiegers. The burden of the upkeep of the Castle/city defences was often the subject of dispute, being shared between the crown and the city authorities, with the Crown usually stepping in with money when the situation looked serious (for example, in the 1290s, defensive ditches were built just outside the walls under the aegis of the Castle authorities, and the Crown took complete control of all of the defences from the mid 14th-century onwards). The Castle took priority – the gatehouse being upgraded at some expense between 1375 and 1385, for example. However, given the greater vulnerability of the City walls to attack, the Citadel, a fortified gatehouse at the southern extreme of the walls, was built in the 1540s.
  The Castle and the religious buildings probably made up about a third of the area of medieval Carlisle, which may have had a relatively small population of c.1500, plus the garrison. The supplying of the Castle and religious personnel would have accounted for much of the economic activity of the city. The burgage plots of Carlisle were owned by the Crown and some by the religious houses. Wool (processed into cloth) and hides were important trades, plus those that supported the garrison forces and the administrative officers of regional government: tanners, blacksmiths, millers (corn-mills were located outside the walls), bakers, etc. Caldewgate may have been something of an industrial suburb specialising in metalworking.
  Each trade had its guild, and  the Guildhall (1407) is the only surviving medieval house in Carlisle. Houses were largely of wooden construction (Carlisle being severely damaged by fire on at least four occasions), and there was no running water-supply (with a reliance on wells to provide water and cess-pits and open sewers to get rid of it). People lived in close proximity to their animals (pigs, goats, sheep, chickens) and their work.
  As for other urban centres during the medieval period in Cumbria, it has been said that "urban life was hardly ever fully developed". Boroughs (defined by burgage tenure), were limited to a few places: Carlisle, Cockermouth, Keswick, Egremont, Ulverston, Dalton, Kendal, Brough, Appleby, and Penrith. There were other market centres which had urban, but non-borough, characteristics such as Brampton, Alston, Wigton, Workington, Kirkby Lonsdale, and Kirkby Stephen.
  The growth in towns was either organic in nature (as at Penrith), or was "planted" (planned, as at Egremont) usually by the lord of the manor. A spurt in growth took place between 1100 and 1350, but a decline in late medieval times left only Carlisle, Penrith, Cockermouth, and Kendal as the main survivors. 
caption: Tile Tower, Carlisle
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