Situated on level ground, on the north bank of the River Roden, close to a part of Watling Street connecting Chester and Wroxeter, Wem – whose name probably derives from the unhealthy marshland surrounding it – was a Domesday manor held, of Roger de Montgomery, by William Pantulf,one of the earl's chief supporters. William preserved his barony by supporting Henry I against Robert de Bellesme. Wem functioned as the caput of the family estates (i.e. the base for administration of thebarony manors and tenants) after, if not before, a castle was built there in mid-twelfth century. This was probably built by Hugh Pantulf, William's great-grandson, whose marriage into the Fitz-Alan family likely helped him qualify for selection as sheriff of Shropshire, a post he held from about 1180 to 1189. The castle may then have attracted further settlement around it.
Victoria Buteux [Central Marches Historic Towns Survey: Archaeological assessment of Wem, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester County Archaeological Service Report 351, 1995, p.2] attributes to Eyton a statement that in 1205 William Pantulf obtained a market licence for Wem, and on that basis she conjectures that a town was established there at the same date. I have not encountered this reference in Eyton. Samuel Garbet [The History of Wem, Wem, 1818, pp.29, 227-28] gives the same licence date (although some modern accounts have picked up an error changing it to 1202) but identifies Warin Fitz-Gerold as guardian of William Pantulf and the person who obtained licence for a Sunday market and a June fair.
Neither of these attributions is very satisfactory. The Charter Rolls have nothing to say on the subject, and Letters' Gazetteer of Markets has not noticed Wem. William Pantulf was Hugh's eldest son, but Hugh was alive until 1224 and we would expect him to be the agent of licence acquisition during the reign of John – unless he had granted Wem to his son, which there is no reason to think happened. William Pantulf appears to have been an adult by the opening years of the thirteenth century, and would not have needed a guardian; nor would a guardian normally have taken it as within his remit to enhance, through a market licence, an estate in which he had no long-term interest – the guardian's duty was simply to maintain landed value until the heir came of age. The high regard in which Hugh Pantulf was held makes him the more likely Pantulf to have been successful in petitioning the king for a market licence, although William (despite the family joining the final rebellion against King John) was evidently trusted by those governing the realm during the minority of Henry III, a period when many manorial lords took advantage of the weakness of royal authority to acquire market licences.
William's death in 1233 extinguished the male line of the Pantulfs and the marriage of his daughter took Wem into the hands of the Botiler family; around 1286, however, it was temporarily in the hands of her second husband, who was said to have at the manor a market and fair by right of a grant by Henry III [Eyton, vol.9, p.172]. Garbet [loc.cit.] stated that in 1292 a William le Botiler, underage heir to the manor, had a market there, which is plausible; although Eyton makes no reference to a market in his account of that judicial enquiry, he does refer to an inquisition post mortem on one of the Botiler lords in 1290 which indicates that an estimated 6s.8d in revenue was obtained annually from passage (a toll on traders passing through the town), but nothing is said of revenues from market or fair (which were probably rolled up into a global valuation). Garbet further indicated that market day was changed to a Thursday when Sunday markets became frowned upon; although this statement appears, at first glance, inferential rather than evidential, the inquisition post mortem on William Botiler in 1362 does refer, in its extent of Wem, to a Thursday market and a June fair – the reference to the inquisition on the next owner, in 1369, places the market on Sundays, but is likely to be an error or anachronism (the inquisition being held at Shrewsbury, rather than at Wem, where a local jury would have known better). Such events are not very likely to have been prescriptive, given the dating associated with Wem, so a market grant may well have been obtained at some time; I am inclined to suspect that William Pantulf might have obtained it soon after becoming lord, ca. 1225.
Topographic evidence suggests a town may have been laid out on at least one side of Wem's castle/church complex, perhaps around several sides; conceivably the castle was expanded around the same time, with a ditch/rampart as an outer bailey. Although, in the absence of documentation or archaeological investigation, little is known of the castle – which was neglected at early date, destroyed by an assault during the Wars of the Roses, and the site almost erased by post-medieval building and ploughing – we can say that it was erected in the angle of a junction of two roads: one running east-west through the site (the later High Street) and a second running southwards to a river crossing, which may once have been part of a north-south route between Whitchurch and Shrewsbury. It is not clear whether these routes pre-existed the castle, but the east-west road at least shows signs of modifications (redirection and widening) made when castle and town were established. The churchyard was even more pronouncedly contained within that angle, and it seems likely the original church was built as the chapel of the castle, or perhaps of an earlier manor-house, suspected as situated a little further south towards the river crossing. If there were a large outer bailey south of the castle, towards the river, it might have contained the original town, similar to the arrangement at Pleshey in Essex. The crescent line of a street (now Noble Street) just north of the High Street, both ends of which connect to the High Street, might crystallize a remnant of this outer bailey defences, while Buteux and her fellow-authors of the Extensive Urban Survey [op.cit., p.4] believe some streets south of the High Street may also reflect the line of a defensive circuit. Garbet [op.cit., pp. 229-30] reported references to three bars (gateways) at the main entrances to the town, which would (on the basis of locations indicated by Garbet) correspond to either side of the through-road and the point where the southwards road exited the outer bailey beside the river crossing. Within the area of the crescent are two short north-south streets connecting Noble Street and High Street, which tends to support the notion of a town within the bailey. One of these secondary streets, now known as Market Street, connects to one end of a wider part of the High Street, in front of churchyard and the castle's (assumed) inner bailey, and is thought to have been the marketplace.
The Botilers were not resident, and the castle had fallen into ruin by 1290 – it was not mentioned, even as worthless, in the 1362 inquisition post mortem – though the church underwent some rebuilding in the fourteenth century and its advowson appears in the inquisition. But they maintained their market rights – as asserted before the king's itinerant justices in 1292 – and Wem was able to maintain, into the post-medieval period, its role as a modest market town servicing the local area. Wem still has a weekly market, held on Thursdays. New Street, running northwards off the High Street just east of the line of the posited outer bailey, may represent a late medieval planned extension to the original town – in essence a linear suburb. There were said to be over 80 burgage properties within Wem.
In 1673 Wen's residents sued an oppressive manorial lord in defence of what they asserted were, in some cases, ancient borough rights; the basis for this was a charter of liberties granted the burgesses by a manorial lord in 1459; however, evidence was presented that the document had been interfered with, some of the original text erased and spurious privileges written in by some unknown forger. A more trustworthy statement of local tenurial rights was recorded in 1564. Those of the local customs upheld by judgement of the court of Exchequer suggests that those who were known as burgesses did indeed have that status through an ancient form of burgage tenure, and that local administration had always been through a leet court presided over by bailiffs appointed by the lord, but with presentments made by a jury of burgesses. The court rejected, as an interpolation, a statement that burgesses were exempt from tolls.
