Building a functional medieval settlement

...

...

...

...

If you're in Europe, go to the next antiquarian shop, they often have map replicas of older maps. Down to Victorian times is easy to find, for medieval times you have to dig deeper though. Visiting some museums would be the usual way to go.

Yes, getting yourself some education is the most direct path, sorry to disappoint you.

If you're in the states I guess you'll have to visit some specific libary and/or get some dedicated books on the topic.

You can find a lot of stuff on the web, but the validity is... questionable at best in 99,9%.

>Anyone got good resources for how towns looked, were run, were spread out in the Middle Ages?

Also, those are some VERY broad question. You could get multiple Dr titles when answering those properly.

If you need some absolutly basic starting point, has two core principles nailed down: products and transport. Every medieval town had at least one, likely both. Also keep in mind that towns had outlying farming communities in their area. Because transporting goods for miles is a pain, even when you have a river closeby, it helps a lot to have a basic influx of food closeby. So fertile ground is always a big plus.

>Anyone got good resources for how towns looked, were run, were spread out in the Middle Ages? I'm specifically thinking more Renaissance/Elizabethan, but anything helps.

In Da Archive. First page.

Aside from that, let's be a little more specific. Do you already have some settin constraints in mind?

...

I'll hit it up, thanks!

So far, it's fairly vague. I'm only getting compelled to this part of the setting building bc I have games to plan for (I tend to think of... everything else first, and I'm early days on the setting). Really, all I have is "relatively small kingdom, wealthy from good port positions/trade, in a somewhat isolated (secure) geographical setting inspired by how much I love Scottish landscapes". Hilly, rocky, sea-side stuff, or deep forests, that sort of thing. I've got some thoughts re: politics as well, inspired by my reading of American and English political history, that this is a place that puts a lot of weight into the idea of the liberties of freemen, and that that's often in tension with the ruling regime's hopes to consolidate power. Beyond these sorts of sketchings, it's pretty... ambiguous ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is actually a really good idea, I'm gonna look into this as much as I can in my local bookstores/libraries. (American). I love reading about history and doing research like this, I'm just usually more 1700's onwards focused, so this is all new to me, but at least I have... some foundation? in sorting out bullshit from legitimate scholarship.

re: point 2, yeah, I recognize this is hyper-broad. Legitimately any and all advice is welcome, and I just wanted to make clear that there're a lot of subjects that I'd be interesting to hear if anyone had some pointers towards learning more about on here.

Thanks as well for the elaboration on the previous point - the idea of transport/trade being so much more limited is a big example of why "it's like now, except old" is an easy mindset that I need to break, and get down to reading about the actual systems that shaped life back then.

(OP again, I know this isn't scotland)

So a couple points to keep in mind- most households were self-sufficient. They farmed their own food, repaired their own tools and clothes. They did this because medieval peasants made fuck all in money, so they literally couldn’t afford to buy anything. As a result few towns formed- most people had spread out farms with little need for services. You’d just have a town square for services they couldn’t get on their own, a place for the church, blacksmith, town crier, maybe an inn and a mayors office.

Then you’d have a castle for the feudal lord in a strategic position to provide defense in case of war or raiding depending on how often those occur, and how easy it is to raze the land.

Cities were for commerce, and until the industrial revolution had a net negative population growth fueled by immigration. No cities had planners, unless they were old cities from the classical era. Road plans were super chaotic and convuluted (contrast to most American cities that are built on grids).

What show is this pic from?

It's a Ghibli movie

Not OP

Anyone got fantasy pics of ground hovels? Like communities of them.

...

Mattheaus Merian is pretty amazing btw and around 1600 he did tons of city maps for a huge omnibus. Mostly HRE, but also France, Italy and Crete. His map of Paris is very famous.

Related world building question, what types of population centers are there anyway? There's of course the cities with various goods, services and people. What of villages? Obviously there are fishing villages, and more general terms like a farming village. Are there specific terms for villages with orchards, wheat, and olives? Or ones grown out as settlements around types of industry, like a village near a mine, or ones in forest near lumber?

Oh and I forget to menation, almost all his stuff is on wikimedia:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Engravings_by_Matthäus_Merian

It's a good question - have you decided on a rough time yet?

>Start with an empty expanse of grassland with odd clumps of trees here and there.
>Put down a farm. Said farm is home to about seven people (usually a mother and father, an old grandparent and four children ranging from zero to 15 years old). It has a farmhouse made of rocks, sticks and mud with a dirt floor with a kitchen, a main room on the main floor with some bedding and a simple second story loft to provide more living space. Outside is a storehouse for storing food and another for storing farm tools and a pile of firewood. There is also a pen for a few pigs, sheep or a cow and about 4 hectares of farmland that they work.
>Put down fourty seven more of said farms. These are laid out roughly in a grid of 7x7 farms broken up by clumps of trees, pathways, inconvient rocks and with one unfarmed tile. It total covering about 1 square km. This adds up to a population of 336 farmers.
>At the center of that is a small cluster of buildings home to about 40 people. It includes a blacksmith's workshop, a carpenter's workshop, a central grainy and a bar of similar quality of construction to the peasant houses. There is also a stone building particianed into several rooms with a stable and a couple of horses horse. This is home to a knight, his wife, an old grandparent, an eldest son/uncle and about four children with a couple of servants. Said peasants pay the knight.
>in a grid of 16 of said cultivate square km is a small town home to a few hundred people. Here there are potters, saddlemakers, leather workers, cobblers, professional weavers, apothecaries, cartwrights, coopers and other such specialized traits. There is a square where there is a market once a week. There is also a local baron with a few guards and a temple.

Roughly 15th-16th century, more of a low fantasy setting

>based on (pic related), a settlement or city without separated buildings but rather constituting several large compounds (called 'hatru' because Sumerian inspiration)
>more developed than Catalhoyouk, and internal roads are present through the compounds, many are "commons" but unlike Catalhoyouk private residences are separate from the paths of transit except within some of the "neighborhoods" where foot traffic moves through certain households, usually of the merchant or vendor's type
>hundreds of acres of enclosed urban sprawl, with athletic fields, plazas, open-aired markets and Tibetan or Zoroastrian-style open-aired burial pits (called 'gardens', which are generally only known to locals).
>generally home from anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands of residents in the biggest ones
>specific to a certain part of the continent and a mixed bag of Hellenistic-Persian-Bactrian/Indian culture
>cont.

You can also find a lot of cool stuff at sites like oldmapsonline.org/

cont.
>actual appearance is like pic related: columns between open-air spaces with households and residences on the sides.
>urban compounds aren't consistent in class, some areas are fairly impoverished (usually where servants, apprentices, or day laborers live) while others are middle-class (merchants, artisans, skilled workers etc) and lastly private estates and homes of the nobility and gentry
>the resident warrior class of most of these places are like German Junkers, families with long military service, private estates in the countryside far from the city, and servile to any number of lords.
>the "hatru" are powers in their own right but largely are under the dominion of the ruling family thanks to the network of intermarriage. Some, though, are independent, and fiercely defend their sovereignty, being more like republics led by the noble first citizen(s) than part of the feudal framework.
>even people from other cities find the compounds to be enormously claustrophobic, the residents have no problem with it

Theres tons of obscure things. Industry would be something like smelting, pottery, or dyemaking. You could have the town be based on a vineyard, or for its armorsmith. You can have a conglomerate of reasons why the town exists, is there just wheat and crops around? Probably a pretty small village with tons of houses spread out. Theres a mine, a central location, and stable roads? Full of people, relatively little houses.

Port side? You could have a smaller town literally just existing to fish and be a port for a larger town down the way.

Also this guy is a shitter for thinking that a pen-and-paper game needs a Doctorate for a town. Also has no idea how to research anything. HUH.

Let me tell you, libraries, museums don't know shit and likely have barely anything you want on this specific topic. best just to do research on the average peasant's life in the time period, and some obscure towns/cities you can think of.

So if you draw a map you first lay out the roads, then you place a rough area of where the fields are. Then place the walls if there's any then the important buildings such as the church, blacksmith, tavern and anything else needed for the function of the village and finaly put up the houses?

impressively cozy street design