Some English towns have cathedrals and are therefore entitled to call themselves cities. In the time of Henry VIII, these were Bristol, Canterbury, Carlisle, Chester, Chichester, Coventry, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Gloucester, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln, London, Norwich, Oxford, Peterborough, Rochester, Salisbury, Wells, Winchester, Worcester, and York. York should be referred to as York Minster, not York Cathedral, and Lincoln is also a minster, although usually called a cathedral. The cathedral in London is always “St Paul’s,” not “London Cathedral.” The fact that these places are called cities does not mean that they had large populations and flourishing industry. Some, such as Ely, Lichfield, and Rochester, have never been more than modest provincial towns. Other cathedrals have been created in the 19th and 20th centuries, and those towns are now also entitled to call themselves cities. A writer can, of course, create a fictional cathedral city, as Trollope did with Barchester, but can not put a fictional cathedral in a real town.

England is divided into counties for administrative purposes. The boundaries of most of these go back to before 1066, but there were some alterations in 1888, 1964, and 1974. Most of these were highly unpopular with local residents, so writers of historical fiction should be careful to establish exactly which county their characters should be in. Counties are referred to simply as Sussex, Norfolk, Rutland, and so on, never “Sussex County,” although it is correct to say “County Durham.” Every English county has a county town, which is the administrative centre for the county and often a trading and social centre, too. This county town, however, is not necessarily the biggest or most prosperous place within the county. The bigger the town, obviously, the greater the variety of trades and services one would find. In a county town, there would be lawyers, booksellers, goldsmiths, and other high-class trades. In a small market town, one would find only the sort of tradesmen needed by the local farming families--shoemaker, tailor, carpenter, and so on.

Some towns are boroughs or corporate towns. At some point in the past, they acquired a royal charter granting the right to self-government. The sovereign could also suspend a borough’s charter, perhaps as a punishment for disloyalty in time of civil war, and the town might be required to pay a substantial fine to get it back. Not surprisingly, some monarchs decided that this was a good way of raising money. There were about 150 corporate towns or boroughs in England in 1600, more in the south than in the north.

Most boroughs acquired their privileges in the Middle Ages or 16th century, either because they were then strategically or economically important, or because the sovereign wished to favour them. Later, many fell into decay, but still retained their privileges, even if their populations had fallen to just a few hundred. Meanwhile, some of the new industrial towns, with populations in the tens of thousands, had no self-government. The government began to rectify this in the 1830s.

A borough was governed by a mayor and a body of aldermen, usually twenty-four. The mayor was elected by the aldermen each year from among their number. Not everyone wanted to be mayor; the office involved heavy expenditure as the mayor was expected to entertain lavishly and be generous to charity. In some boroughs, if a man was elected and refused to serve without good reason, he had to pay a heavy fine. The election of a new mayor often involved some ceremony, such as a procession, a feast for the aldermen, and a service at the parish church.

The correct form of address for the mayor was “Mr Mayor” or “Your Worship.” Some towns, such as York, had a Lord Mayor, but this does not mean that the man holding the office was a lord. Mayors were normally drawn from among the merchant classes. A mayor might be a ship-owner, a cloth merchant, or a brewer. In the 19th century he might be a factory-owner or a builder. One of the main duties of the mayor was to act as the chief magistrate for his borough, dealing with petty and moderately serious crime and civil matters.

The twenty-four aldermen were elected by, and from among, the freemen of the borough. Not all male inhabitants of a borough were freemen; the proportion varied from place to place. The most common way of acquiring the freedom of a borough were by serving a seven-year apprenticeship, by purchase, or by being the son of a freeman. Freedom meant the freedom to carry on one’s trade within the borough, and the right to vote. Men who did not have the freedom were not unfree in the sense of being slaves or serfs. Having the freedom of Town A did not entitle a man to trade in Town B. Most boroughs fought a constant and losing battle against men who did not have the freedom but who nevertheless attempted to set up in business in their town.

Many places which were not boroughs had the right to hold a market, a privilege conferred or confirmed by royal charter. Up to 1700, there were perhaps five-hundred market towns in England. The number varied as old markets declined and new ones were founded. The more prosperous a district, the more markets there would be, but a market was not supposed to be established less than six or seven miles from an existing one, in order not to encroach on its trade. A town usually held its market once or twice a week. Most markets dealt only with locally-produced goods, but those in the bigger towns, or which specialised in a particular product, might attract merchants from all over England.

Many, perhaps most, English towns were on navigable rivers. Bulky goods such as grain and building materials were moved by barge rather than by road. The bridge, typically built of stone in the Middle Ages and rebuilt in the 19th century, was a major feature of the town, although unlike the medieval London Bridge, most town bridges did not have shops and houses on them.

The most prominent building in a town was normally the church, again usually built of local stone during the middle ages. Other notable buildings in a borough would be the Town Hall or Guildhall (not City Hall, even if the town was a city.) 19th-century Town Halls were usually very imposing buildings. If the town was in a strategically-important location it might have Roman or medieval walls and a mediaeval castle, although these were likely to be crumbling by the 16th century. A town would have one or more inns, where well-to-do travellers stayed and the better off townspeople ate and drank. Poorer inhabitants drank in alehouses or beerhouses. Hotels were not known before the late 18th century, and then, only in London and the biggest provincial towns. Smaller towns often acquired their first hotel along with their first railway station.

The main street was the High Street. If the market was held in the High Street, it might be exceptionally wide, especially if the sheep or cattle market was held there. Alternatively there might be a separate Market Place or Market Square. In prosperous towns, property facing the High Street was in great demand and very expensive. So that as many tradesmen as possible might squeeze in, High Street shopfronts were often narrow, but several stories high, with the upper floors “jettied” or overhanging the street and the premises stretching back a long way. Townspeople built in brick, timber, or stone, whichever was locally available, although the wealthiest merchants were more likely to build in stone for extra security. Fire was always a hazard with thatched roofed, timber buildings packed tightly together; London was not the only town to suffer in this way. Merchants and tradesmen lived “over the shop,” so the High Street was the principal residential area as well as the main trading street. Practitioners of a particular trade tended to congregate together, so street names such as Bread Street, Fisher Street, Weaver Street are common in old town centres. Unlike today, the suburbs were normally the poorest and least desirable parts of a town.

In the 18th century, many towns began to carry out improvements, widening old streets, laying out new, wider roads and squares with good quality houses to attract well-to-do residents. High-class suburbs began to develop for wealthy businessmen who could afford to keep their own carriages and drive into town each day. Most people, however, still had to live within walking distance of their place of work, and in the 19th-century, town centres became grossly overcrowded. It was only in the last third of the 19th century, when cheap public transport became available, that suburbs for the skilled working classes and lower-middle classes began to be built, and streets of small brick-terraced houses began to spread out from old town centres. Builders named these residential streets after members of their families, members of the royal family, national heroes, and naval and military victories. In developments aimed at middle-class families, alternatives to street, such as road, avenue, and crescent began to be used.

Needless to say, this is a highly-simplified account, and any writer wanting to set part of a novel in an English town will need to do additional research. Still, I hope this gives an impression of what a character in a historical novel might see, and perhaps some of the characters and situations he or she might encounter, in an English town in the past.