Although the name points to a Saxon, one Albrecht or perhaps Ethelbert, there has been no archaeology at Albrighton to indicate the extent of early medieval settlement there. At the time of Domesday the estate was held by Norman Venator (meaning huntsman) of Earl Roger de Montgomery, an active town-founder, although Albrighton may not have become a town before the royal grant of market and fair in 1232. Since this Norman's manors were, from the twelfth century, in the hands of a family named Picheford (after their other manor in Shropshire), it would seem they were his heirs, though by now holding directly of the Crown; the family must have been responsible for building the church -- or rebuilding a chapel serving the manor-house -- probably in the late twelfth century, for use of themselves and the villagers who presumably settled around the manorial enclosure.

It was Ralph de Picheford who took out the licence for a Tuesday market and a short July fair; an inquisition post mortem in 1285 estimated the market's annual value at £2. In 1292 his grandson successfully defended in court his right to administration of the assizes of bread and ale on the grounds it was implicit in the market grant; but he sold the manor towards the end of the decade, and the advowson of the church a couple of years later. In 1303 John de la Warre -- grandson of the purchaser and already lord of Ewyas Harold -- acquired the necessary renewal of the licence, a year following a settlement with a co-heir which made John the sole lord of Albrighton. Neither Ralph nor John is known to have obtained market licences for their other manors. However, the grandfather of John's wife Joan, Robert de Greilly, had obtained in 1227 grant of market and fair for Swineshead (Lincolnshire), where his forebears had founded an abbey a century earlier, and in the same year a fair for Manchester, apparently already a market location (no licence being known). It was probably at this time that he established there the burgages and borough court referenced in the inquisition post mortem on Robert in 1282, when the value of its market and fair were estimated at £6 13s. 4d. and came into John de la Warre's hands through his marriage. In 1285/86 the tolls alone produced £2, not a striking amount.

The case of Manchester warrants a brief digression because of the light it throws on administration of the markets of new towns of this period, even though we cannot be certain whether the Manchester situation reflects common practice. Joan's father Thomas had confirmed the borough status of Manchester through a charter of liberties and legal customs in 1301, based broadly, though not entirely, on one granted to the nearby Lancashire town of Salford ca.1230 by an Earl of Chester, not long after he had obtained a licence for a market and fair there, as too was the charter of the Cheshire town of Stockport, which Tait [Mediaeval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire, Manchester: University Press, 1904, p.112] argued dates to the same year (1260) that another Earl of Chester granted Robert de Stockport the right to a market there. The unusually lengthy charter for Manchester concentrates on the terms of burgage tenure -- there must have been over 150 burgage plots laid out in a single standard size, if all paid the same annual rent as the charter implies -- and on legal procedure in the portmoots.

But interspersed are a few clauses related to market matters. Burgesses were to be exempt from market tolls throughout the demesne of the grantor; outsiders were subject to toll and, if they attempted to quit the marketplace without paying the toll due from them, to a fine of 12s. on top of what they already owed. The reeve, elected by the burgesses, was the administrator of the allocation of market stalls -- the term 'seld' here seeming to mean stalls, although perhaps also groupings of stalls -- to burgesses, whose status gave them the right to trade free of toll; non-burgesses could purchase trading licences in order to avoid toll (they were known as censarii. A penny was payable, by members of either group, to the manorial lord for being allocated a stall site. Stalls could also be rented by another group categorized as 'merchants', who were probably outsiders wishing to trade in the marketplace; if burgesses wished to station themselves among these visitors, they might do so but would be expected then to pay the same kind of fees charged the outsiders -- otherwise burgesses were expected to stick to their allocated spots. It is not clear whether this provision indicates the facilities assigned to visiting traders were superior structures (perhaps better protected from the elements), were grouped in a more prime location within the marketplace, or simply whether the locals wished access to the visibility that outsiders, often bringing relatively luxurious goods, would attract. A clause requiring that loans have witnesses may have been applicable to credit transactions between buyer and seller. And 12d. was set as the standard fine for anyone infringing the assizes of bread and ale.

Although Albrighton, unlike Manchester, did not receive a borough charter from its lord, we hear of a grant of two burgages at Albrighton in 1295, while there is mention of burgesses, over whom Ralph de Picheford (the grandson) and his predecessors were said to have had leet jurisdiction, in the context of the renewal of seigneurial privileges in 1303, though the market was then still referred to, in echo of the original grant, as manorial. The market was held in and beside the northeast-northwest through-road (High Street) which led northwards to Newport; it took the form of a funnel-shaped widening of that road at its opposite end to the manor-house and church. The original nucleus of the settlement was in the western section of Albrighton, around the manorial enclosure and adjacent church, both of which abutted onto the through-road. Burgage plots of the planned town were laid out further east -- on the north and south sides of the marketplace and around a crossroads at the west end of the marketplace -- though not necessarily all at once; the earliest burgage plots are likely to have been around the marketplace and perhaps westwards to the crossroads, with settlement along the north and south branches conceivably later phases of development. Albrighton seems to have prospered as a small market town, although expanding little in the Early Modern period. Official recognition of borough status did not come until 1644, however, followed by a charter of incorporation in 1663, describing Albrighton as an ancient borough, a status later lost.