Re: John Leland's "suburbe"

Dave Postles (pot@leicester.ac.uk)
Mon, 23 Oct 1995 08:39:53 +0000

This message was originally submitted by Joyce.Oshyer@STROMLOHS.ACT.EDU.AU to
Joe
Thanks for the information you posted. I had the impression these suburbs
were outside the village walls because of the mention of gates, so wondered
why. Was it an overflow from the "city" as we know today, or was there
another reason for these "suburbs" being outside the walls?

Cheers
Joyce [Oshyer]
joyce.oshyer@stromlohs.act.edu

I also posted the request to Mediev-L and Robert Helmerichs informs me that:

>"Suburb" goes back to ancient Rome; in the MA, the primary meaning (I
>believe) was a portion of a city that lay outside the walls; these areas
>seemed to have their own community feeling, although there is no record of
>any of them actually having a strip-mall or a mulyi-plex. ... [lots of
Latin I >couldn't understand :( ] ... These examples seem to indicate
that, in c.12, >towns even as large as Poitou did not have separate and
distinct suburbs, but >rather the suburb consisted of the entire area
outside the walls.But that might >be too much weight to put on two examples!

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