Rural marketing in medieval Nottinghamshire

The data sources available for a study of medieval marketing are extremely limited. However, work in contemporary developing nations illustrates the existence of a detailed structure of periodic marketing. This paper draws cautious parallels between medieval Nottinghamshire and these contemporary patterns. It begins by reconstructing a possible set of markets for the fourteenth century; details of tolls and rents are mentioned in order to indicate the types of produce in circulation and some aspects of the practical functioning of the markets. The spatial and temporal characteristics of these markets are shown not to agree with either the trader or the consumer models of periodic marketing, although there is some evidence to suggest that markets taking place on the same day were generally not located in settlements that were close together. Taxation evidence suggests that a market did not always lead to a relative increase in the importance of a settlement. In addition markets appear to have been established by lords of widely varying social status. By the seventeenth century there had been a large reduction in the number of markets, and they had become essentially urban in character, primarily associated with the few main roads in the county.