I would start the lesson with a starter activity which would involve me giving them in groups a copy of a picture of a typical medieval town and I would ask them to discuss and answer a number of questions such as: what they thought what was going in different parts of the photos, how the town was built, where it was built, what towns appeared to be like in medieval times etc. By giving them such an exercise to start off with I would hope that this would help to focus them in onto the topic of medieval towns.
(Example of medieval town to use for starter and for explanation on what medieval towns looked like)
Next using this picture as a starting point as well as a picture of York I would explain to them what medieval towns were like i.e. how big there were (in terms of the size of the population), about the saniation of towns, the issue of livestock, how they were built (i.e. narrow streets, houses close together and overlooking each other etc), how law and order was enforced in towns as well as how towns enforced curfews.
(Picture of York Shambles to show what medieval streets looked like)
Following this explanation I would ask the children to draw a picture of a medieval town and to give underneath it an explanation of why they drew them medieval town in the way they did (focusing in on medieval street, problems in the town- i.e. saniation, livestock, law and order etc).
Next I would move on to explain to the children how medieval towns grew up i.e. by castle or monasteries or by rivers or close to a point where two trade points joined up or small villages developing into small towns as more and more people move in to them for work and opportunities to make money. I would should use this by using a number of pictures to illustrate this point e.g.
(a picture of Exeter showing the town built by the castle)
(a picutre of Tewkesbury showing the town built by the monastery)
I would then ask them to work in pairs and decide where they would place their town if they were building one in the medieval times and I would make sure that they gave explanations for doing this. Once each pair had done this I would go round the class and ask different pairs to explain where they would place their towns and why. I may use a template like this: http://www.schoolhistory.co.uk/year7links/life/medtownmap.pdf to help me create this activity.
Once we had finished looking at how towns grew up in medieval England, I would move onto looking at the role of charters and I would explain to the children why charters were introduced in the first place, how charters worked once they had been setup and what rules people introduced once they had setup them up (i.e. how people could introduce their own laws once they had paid the lord to do so and that the charters would talk about how to run the markets, how to collect tax money, how to control law courts, how to shut off towns or close town gates to outsiders and foreigners, what jobs people needed to carry out in order to keep the towns clean etc). I would also show them examples of charters such as this Royal charter of Gloucester introduced in 1227 (in J. Byrom, C. Counsell and M. Riley, Medieval Minds: Britain 1066-1500):
'If any villein should stay in the town and support himself and pay his taxes for a year and a day, after that time he cannot be caught again by his lord'.
Following this exercise I would ask them to create their own charters for their medieval towns and ask them to consider how they would solve the problems that they would face (thinking back to what I told them about what medieval towns were like).
I would finish this lesson off by recapping on what we had learnt in the lesson and asking the children to consider what was good and what was bad about medieval towns.
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