It is exactly a thousand years since Darlington first appeared in written records. During the following millennium, the small Anglo-Saxon settlement grew into today's thriving town, its history now generally linked in the public mind with entrepreneurial Quakers and the birth of railways. But as this book shows, Darlington's history encompasses many more diverse aspects in the change from medieval village to modern town. Through a survey of its physical development, the book describes how the town flourished in the middle ages; was largely destroyed by fire in 1585; and grew again in the...

This collection of 153 wills and inventories provides a vivid insight into the socio-economic life of the small Yorkshire market town of Northallerton during a time of growing prosperity, when its position on the main road to the north also enabled it to prosper from wider trading links. Trades and professions represented in the collection include yeomen, merchants, tallow chandlers, weavers, a maltman, innkeepers and a wide range of leather workers; the documents collected here provide a wealth of information regarding their houses and their contents, lifestyles and standards of living in...