towns

The standard works on towns are F.W. Maitland, Township and borough (1898); Adolphus Ballard, The Domesday boroughs (1904); Carl Stephenson, Borough and town (1933); and James Tait, The medieval English borough (1936).

Peter H. Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England (1978), is a brief but valuable survey, and H.C. Darby, Domesday England (1977), a lucid exposition of the Domesday material and the problems it raises. Susan Reynolds, An introduction to English medieval towns (1977), provides an excellent background sketch. Her essay on 'The Domesday town', in Domesday studies, edited by J.C. Holt (1987), pages 295-310, and that of G.H. Martin, 'The Domesday borough', in Domesday Book: a re-assessment, edited by Peter H. Sawyer (1985), pages 143-63, are fully referenced recent surveys.