TRADES AND OCCUPATIONS.

The economic success of a medieval town naturally depended, to a great extent, on the variety of industries and trades it offered to the surrounding countryside and on the market it provided for the exchange of goods. A prosperous town acted as a magnet upon its immediate area, drawing a supply of labour and produce from the country and giving in return goods which were unobtainable in village communities and services which were dependent on the town's craftsmen. To anticipate the conclusions of the following survey, late medieval Durham emerges as a comparatively small market town with a limited range of trades. These trades or occupations were geared to the servicing of the urban community as a whole, and the two great ecclesiastical households of the bishop and the prior on the peninsula in particular, as well as to the needs of the agricultural communities nearby. Durham was still small enough to retain several characteristics of an agricultural community well into the sixteenth century: many open spaces, orchards and closes were to be found in the outer boroughs; and probably a significant proportion of the town's inhabitants were employed as seasonal agricultural labourers, working, for example, on the priory hostillar's manor of Elvethall. Durham was closely bound to its immediate hinterland and to a purely local market; it thus bears close comparison with a town such as fourteenth-century Colchester, where local trade predominated and agrarian-based occupations were important in the town's economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]