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A Cart Ride from Elmstead Manor to the Fair

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A Cart Ride from Elmstead Manor to the Fair

Follow a reeve across a described map from a medieval manor to a market town and a fair.

Read the map and the story

Elmstead and Kingsford are imagined places based on real manors and towns in England around 1250. Read the map description and the story. Then answer the questions.

Map of Elmstead and Kingsford (imagined, about 1250)
1. Elmstead village and the lord's manor house sit at the center of the map, ringed by three large open fields.
2. The woods and the common pasture lie north of the village.
3. The lord's water mill stands east of the village, on the River Wend.
4. The River Wend flows south from the mill. A road follows its west bank.
5. Kingsford, a walled market town, lies 9 miles south of the mill, where the road crosses the river on a stone bridge.
6. St. Aldric's Abbey and its fair meadow lie on the east bank, just across the bridge from Kingsford.

Walter's Journey

1In June of about 1250, Walter, the reeve of Elmstead, got ready for a trip. A reeve was a villager chosen to make sure the lord's land was worked. Elmstead's peasant families farmed narrow strips in the three open fields. Their strips lay mixed among their neighbors' strips and among the lord's own land, called the demesne, so the village plowed and harvested together on dates it agreed on. Families could also graze animals on the common pasture and gather fallen branches in the woods, but anyone who cut down a living tree without permission was fined in the manor court.

2The manor grew and made most of what its people ate and wore, but not everything. No one in Elmstead could make salt or iron, and the lord wanted coins to pay what he owed the king and to buy fine cloth. So Walter loaded a cart with sacks of wool from the lord's sheep. He drove first to the mill, where every villager had to grind grain and leave part of the flour for the lord. With the lord's share of flour on board, he followed the river road.

3Kingsford's gate was crowded, because Thursday was market day. The king had granted the town a charter, so it could hold a weekly market and charge tolls, and Walter paid a penny to bring his cart inside the walls. Shops lined streets named for their trades, such as Bakers' Row and Tanners' Lane. Wardens of the bakers' guild walked the stalls weighing loaves, and a baker caught selling light loaves paid a fine. The guild also banned baking by candlelight after dark. Walter sold the flour, then bought salt and an iron blade for a plow.

4He saved the wool for St. Aldric's Fair. Each June the abbey held a fair in its meadow that lasted about two weeks. Merchants came from London and from across the sea in Flanders, where weavers turned English wool into fine cloth. Because traders came and went so fast, the fair had its own court, called a piepowder court, from French words for "dusty feet." When a Flemish buyer said two of Walter's sacks were lighter than promised, the court weighed them and settled the matter that same afternoon. Walter sold all of the wool for silver coins and drove home before the hay harvest began.

1.
In which direction did Walter travel from the mill to reach Kingsford?
Question 1 options
2.
A villager is fined in the manor court for breaking a rule about the lord's land. Where on the map did he most likely break it?
Question 2 options
3.
Based on the map, why was Kingsford a good place for a market town?
Question 3 options
4.
Put Walter's stops in order.

Elmstead village → → → → home

Manor, town and fair

Use the story and the map to answer.

5.
Who set or controlled each thing in the story: the manor or the town?
6.
Why did Walter need to go to town, if the manor produced most of what its people needed?
Question 6 options
7.
Circle the TWO sentences that show a guild controlling how goods were made or sold.

8.
A Kingsford shoemaker starts selling shoes with weak, loose stitching. Based on the story, what would the shoemakers' guild most likely do?
Question 8 options
9.
Why did a fair need a court like the piepowder court that settled cases in a day?
Question 9 options
10.
Draw a line from each word to its meaning in the story.
11.
Which statement best describes how Elmstead fit into wider trade?
Question 11 options
12.
Claim: Elmstead needed Kingsford and the fair, and Kingsford and the fair needed manors like Elmstead. Do you agree? Use at least two details from the map or the story as evidence and explain your reasoning.