King Edward’s Planted Towns

Welcome to our video about King Edward’s planted towns in North Wales! Planted towns, which in modern words might be called planned towns or planned communities, have been in existence for millenia. The Romans were well known for establishing grid patterns in any new settlement they built, and their street system remains in many British towns. The Anglo-Saxons established planned towns, and as the middle ages progressed, lords and kings at times wanted to establish a town where there hadn’t been one before. The Normans called these bastides. They were usually created for economic purposes, and were designed for the mutual benefit of the king, the landowner, and the new townsfolk to provide an efficient way of marketing surplus food and other goods and supplying a newly established castle. The landowner would charge a rent for a building plot (a Read more…