Bridgnorth does not appear in Domesday in its own right. Its site lay within the Domesday manor of Membrefelde, later corrupted to Morville, on a natural escarpment overlooking the Severn, some 22 miles downstream of Shrewsbury; its often steep rocky slopes, climbing from the west bank of the river, gave it natural defences. The manor – the principal one of the hundred – was divided up amongst Earl Roger de Montgomery and his sub-tenants, but the site of Bridgnorth was part of the earl's own demesne. It was well-placed to control trade routes from the south-east Midlands. There may have been a bridge there from the Late Saxon period, and certainly the river crossing must have been advantageous to the development of the town's commerce. There is no evidence of pre-Saxon settlement, but a Danish fort and Mercian burh were said by chroniclers to have been established – the former in 895, the latter in 912 – somewhere in the vicinity, though the precise sites remain a matter of debate. Two years earlier an invading Danish force was said to have crossed the Severn at Cantbricge, while Æthelflæd's burh was said to have been erected at Bricge, and we encounter the place-name Cwatbrycg in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 895; these may have been references to Bridgnorth, though possibly to Quatford, a few miles south-east and also on the Severn [aspects of the etymological debate are reviewed in W.P. Phillimore, "On the Name Bridgnorth" Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, vol.1 (1877) pp.129-32; Victoria Buteux, Central Marches Historic Towns Survey: Archaeological assessment of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester County Archaeological Service Report 301, 1996, p.4; D.J.F. Stone, Mutually Assured Construction: Æthelflæd’s burhs, Landscapes of Defence and the Physical Legacy of the Unification of England, 899-1016, University of Exeter PhD thesis, 2017, p.60-62.]
No minting activity is known to have taken place at Bridgnorth and it seems probable that the burh there was created only for a military purpose. The town is generally held to have come into existence ca.1101 when a subsequent earl, Robert de Bellesme, in rebellion against Henry I but outmatched, transferred his father's military base and borough at nearby Quatford to a more defensible site – possibly that of the Saxon burh – atop a spur dominating one of the few bridging points along the central Severn (a stretch of the river not easy to cross), and near an existing settlement around a church, St. Leonard's, whose fabric incorporates some Saxon stonework dating back perhaps as far as the eighth century. Construction of Bridgnorth's castle atop the steep riverside promontory may have been underway in the late eleventh century. Despite Earl Robert's hopes to use this base to withstand the king, the castle was surrendered after a siege in 1102 and Robert was soon after exiled to Normandy. The earldom thus escheated to the Crown and it was under the king that a settlement immediately north of the castle – which we may only assume to have had an urban character if it had a marketplace and burgages, neither of which is certain – developed. The sloping site was not conducive to laying out regular series of burgage plots, and it was perhaps the boundaries of earlier fields that most influenced the irregular shape of residential plots. Passageways down to the river were cut into the cliff-face and caves, natural or man-made (for residential, storage, industrial or other uses) also existed, though from uncertain date.
The earldom was not integrated into the royal demesne but retained a separate identity, administered by deputies of the king. The first of these was Richard de Belmeis, a minor landowner in the Bridgnorth region of the county who had increased the profitability of his own holding, was said to have legal expertise, and served as a steward to Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, (but did not support Earl Robert's rebellion) before Henry I appointed him his viceregal agent – effectively sheriff and justiciar – in the county. Richard was also in lower clerical orders, which enabled Henry to reward him by having him elected Bishop of London in 1108, though this did not stop the king from sending him straight back to the Welsh Marches to look after royal interests there, continuing his viceroy's role until shortly before his death in 1127. He was succeeded in that role, which included the custody of Bridgnorth Castle, by Pain Fitz-John, who would himself later found, at date unknown, a castle within Wales at Painscastle, beside which a new town would be established ca.1231.
Bridgnorth's castle retained importance as a fortress, prison, and royal residence into the mid-thirteenth century, with the rebuilding of the keep in the latter half of the twelfth century, regular outlay on maintenance, and addition of a barbican in front of the main entrance in 1220; yet emphasis gradually refocused away from the fortifications towards the facilities for administrative and residential use. A survey of 1281 found it dilapidated, while Leland described it as ruinous. At times of peace the castle had only a small garrison but in times of threat larger forces were stationed there. An indicator of the needs of the latter, recorded in 1174 in the account of the sheriff (who was also usually the keeper of the castle at that period, though acting through a constable), are the 92 horse-loads of grain, 20 horse-loads of salt, 120 pigs, and 120 cheeses bought to victual the garrison; at least some of this is likely to have been acquired through the local market.
Visits by the king and his retinue must have necessitated expenditures on better fare, not to mention such items as fuel and candles, although wax is known to have been brought in from Northampton on at least one occasion, while a certain amount of wine was kept at the castle and replenished at need from such sources as Bristol, even though we know there were vintners resident at Bridgnorth by about 1200; during a royal visit in 1212 King John is said to have distributed bread, fish and ale to feed a hundred paupers, and such were probably local purchases. In 1240 some of the royal wine stored at the castle was turned over to the town bailiffs to sell on the king's behalf, perhaps because ageing, while in 1252 the local bailiffs actually bought a large quantity of that wine; terms of the borough charter of 1256 suggest that Bridgnorth's market was being periodically used to dispose of surplus royal wine, during which sales the burgesses were forbidden to sell their own wine.
As a transfer of the earl's base, it is assumed the construction of the castle was accompanied by resettlement of at least those of the Quatford residents willing to move; the earl would doubtless have been conscious of the advantages of preserving adjacent military and civilian populations. To induce civilians to relocate he would have had to assure them of the right to hold a market and of the burgage tenure available to them at Quatford. The initial phase of the assumed new town at Bridgnorth – known at first as Bruge – was built within the castle's outer bailey, possibly around the two streets presently there, known as East Castle Street and West Castle Street, the former connecting to the church of St. Mary in the inner bailey; this inference is based not only on topographic evidence, but on an assertion made by the burgesses to a royal inquest of 1342. Later extensive redevelopment of the area has obscured what this initial urban settlement may have looked like.
After Henry I's acquisition of Bridgnorth he may have granted, or confirmed, borough liberties to the residents, although the subsequent confirmation by Henry II (1157) is not explicit on this point, simply recognizing any customs or liberties the burgesses had in his grandfather's time; this blanket grant would have endorsed an existing market, explaining the absence of any later licence. In May 1227 Henry III confirmed to the burgesses exemption from toll throughout England, which John had granted in 1215; two months later he added fresh privileges, modelled on a charter recently granted to Shrewsbury, including a free air clause, control over the king's grain mill just outside the town, an expanded list of toll exemptions, and a merchant gild with a monopoly for its members over commercial activity, "save at the will of the burgesses" [Calendar of the Charter Rolls, vol.1, p.45], a proviso that has been interpreted as the right to sell trading licences to others (but see below).
Over the course of the twelfth century Bridgnorth expanded northwards, perhaps in phases and in at least a partly planned fashion, beyond the bailey, whose confined space allowed only small plots for homes and businesses and could not accommodate population growth. This expansion was focused around the present High Street, which proceeds north from a point just outside the entrance to the bailey; whether development here was planned or piecemeal remains uncertain. The High Street might conceivably (if the burh was situated on the later castle site) represent a redevelopment of an existing road. To its east lay the church of St. Leonard's and presumed eleventh century settlement; the church underwent alterations in the twelfth century, suggesting an increased importance in the community. Westwards off the High Street ran three secondary streets, one perhaps originating as a route across the promontory to the St. Leonard's settlement, while the others more likely came about as the town expanded along the High Street; here, it is thought, burgage plots were all laid out at the same time. Along the western riverbank small plots of irregular size situated on minor lanes are suggestive of poorer homes, workshops, and warehouses near the riverside wharves.
There was also settlement on the east bank of the river, in what was later called Low Town, in contrast to the High Town on the promontory and its slope west of the river; before 1195 the Hospital of St. John – a hostel for travellers – had been founded there, on the approach road to the bridge. The west-bank hillside was too steep for carts or horsemen to proceed directly from the bridge to the town, so they followed a circuitous route that headed north from the bridge then, at a switchback, south-west to reach the point where the High Street terminated at the castle's outer defences. Pedestrians, however, could proceed directly upslope by means of stairways cut into the hillside. The marketplace, presumably originally within the bailey, had moved to the High Street probably by mid-twelfth century – indeed the need for more space for traders and their places of business may have been what drove the initial expansion beyond the bailey, whereas expansion along the westwards-running streets was more an issue of residential space. A secondary market may have existed in Low Town – another possible candidate for the location of one of the pre-Conquest fortifications – at the junction of a southbound street with the road leading eastwards from the bridge; Low Town's residents included burgesses, and plots flanking this postulated market area are suggestive of burgages, though whether the product of planned development is not absolutely certain.
It must be acknowledged that much of this interpretation of urban growth is conjectured primarily from topographic and cartographic evidence, as yet with little support from archaeology, and aspects of it remain subject to debate. Jeremy Haslam [Town-plan analysis and the limits of inference: the cases of Bridgnorth and Ludlow, Shropshire, unpublished paper, 2009; https://jeremyhaslam.files.wordpress.com/.../bridgnorth-and-ludlow-town- plans.pdf, last checked 12 Nov. 2015] argues instead for a unified planning exercise encompassing the expansion along the High Street and the streets running west off it, in which the varying sizes and shapes of tenement plots are explicable by the need to provide roughly equal street frontages for plots, including those at corners of the High Street and connecting streets, as well as to adapt to the landscape and the presence of the St. Leonard's settlement.
The expanded town was protected with a bank and ditch, to which was added first a wooden palisade and then stone walls in the thirteenth century. Bridgnorth obtained grants of October and November fairs in 1226 and 1359 respectively. The former was made to the men of Bruges and the latter to the good men of the town of Bruggenorth; in 1234 the king notified the men of the town of Brug of the appointment of a new keeper of the castle and manor. Such references are further indications, beyond the charter rights mentioned above, of the town having emerged from the shadow of the castle, both literally and figuratively in terms of administrative independence; the earliest known town hall was in a symbolic location at the head of the High Street, just outside the castle entrance. This independence was ratified in the royal charter of 1256, freeing the borough from certain intermediary actions of sheriffs and castellans. By this time the castle's outer bailey had been transferred to the borough, although it had already ceased to be the focus of local commerce. The division of authority could sometimes result in conflict; the hundredal enquiry of 1275 heard several complaints from Bridgnorth's jurors against the under-sheriff, including that he had arrested and imprisoned the town bailiffs, contrary to its chartered liberties, when they refused to transfer a certain woman from the borough gaol to that of the castle. By the early fourteenth century Bridgnorth was the second wealthiest town of the county and sending representatives to parliaments.
Bridgnorth's continued role as military centre, its location on road routes, and (particularly) its role as a river port, helped it prosper, particularly in the wool trade and the cloth and leather industries; a range of occupations related to those industries are documented, and some old place-names within the town – Tenter's Yard and Walker Street, the latter by the Severn – likewise are echoes of cloth manufacture. The volume of business amplified socio-economic diversification – the 1327 lay subsidy showing a wide range in wealth among the residents – and supported the presence of a small Jewish community for a while. A public water-supply system was in place by the early fourteenth century, while inns and shops in the High Street are heard of over the course of that century, with some of the shops extending out into the street to better capture a share of market business.
The terms of a grant of murage to the borough in 1220 indicate that its market was attracting business from the local region and from outside Shropshire, arriving by both road and river. The construction of defences around the town, which continued into the 1260s judging from renewals of murage, was not simply a practical need within an unsettled region of the country and a strategic site contested between king and rebels again in 1155 and 1322; it must be understood partly as an effort to encourage trade by offering traders more security, and also partly to enhance the status of the town within the county. That Bridgnorth was in competition with Shrewsbury at this period is illustrated by the latter's disinclination to recognize the toll exemption claimed by Bridgnorth traders travelling there, and by a refusal to allow those traders to purchase raw hides or unfinished cloth at Shrewsbury – a court case (1223) on the latter complaint focused on whether the Bridgnorth buyers could export such items toll-free, and found against this. In this context it may be significant that, in 1227, Shrewsbury's new charter of liberties empowered it to restrict commerce – probably intending the right to sell, rather than the right to buy, but potentially open-ended – to members of its merchant gild; Bridgnorth responded by obtaining the same control a few months later in its own charter. The difficulties faced by Bridgnorth's merchants were not just with Shrewsbury; in 1223 the king had to back up John's charter with a letter to the Bristol authorities, ordering them to respect the toll exemptions of Bridgnorth burgesses.
Bridgnorth remained a viable market town, of relatively large size, throughout the Middle Ages, though its reliance on cloth brought short-term decline towards the end of that period. By Leland's time some of the shops along the High Street had acquired gallery-type fronts, similar to the Chester Rows.
