Lawnmower Boy Posted May 21, 2021 Report Share Posted May 21, 2021 By "rags trade" I meant a fashion district, which would be in an upscale neighbourhood. 19 hours ago, Lawnmower Boy said: -Hiring halls for stevedores and sailors; -Fish curing grounds (open saltmarsh, possibly with drying racks); -Ropewalks; -Lumberyards (for seasoning), also naval stores, canvas, sailmakers; -Tanneries (for sealers). I notice a tannery and adjacent fullery adjacent to the hippodrome, but I don't think that's a very plausible location for them. Ditto a brickwork. -Precincts for foreign traders, like the Hanse in London; -A moneychanging/goldsmithing district; -Fortunetellers; -Rags district; -Granaries, mills, stonecutters, saw mill, nail mill, all needing water access and a fair amount of space, with preferably a millstream or adjacent to a hill for a windmill; Expanding a bit, the hiring halls were a fairly big deal earlier in this century and might give their names to a neighbourhood, although on reflection I suspect that the associated chapels might be more important, notably the Deep Sea MIssions= Centres, or their medieval equivalent. "The Mission." Fish curing grounds smell bad, and pretty much rule out other use in season; but that's not what's important here. They have to be kept open for use out of season, and the authorities tend to be quite zealous about this because the "teinds" from a fish curing ground can be quite significant. The dispute between Anstruther town and Dryburgh Abbey is one of the highlights of medieval Scottish law and ultimately went all the way up to the Pope for resolution. (No doubt playing its part in convincing the Curia that Scotland needed its own archbishopric so that it never had to get involved in a dispute like that again.) Halophytic weeds are going to grow like, well, weeds, on a fish curing ground out of season, and will be a lucrative resource in themselves. You can just graze sheep on them, but they're also be useful for soapmaking and lots of other medieval industrial chemistry that starts with making lye. (Including fish curing!) In short, you're going to see stretches of the foreshore kept open and green by significant legal penalties on would-be encroachments. "The Grange"? Or, if it is the castle that owns the lands, "the Marchfield," from "Field of Mars," because it is mostly associated with drilling. Tanneries and fulleries don't just smell like urine. They also smell like fecal matter, because fecal matter, urine and rotten milk are all used in the processing. This is why, typically these industries are located outside of the city gates, downwind and near the water and perhaps in close proximity with housing for an untouchable class. If there is a local flax industry, then the retting ponds are likely to be found here (and the flax fields are likely to be here as well.) City industries typically want to keep the wind-and waterborne effluvia of these businesses well away from their own work. This is the kind of thing that helped make London's East End the place it traditionally was. "Cheapside" in London no doubt has some much more antiquarian word usage behind its name, but sounds like a good name for this kind of district. Brickworks are similarly noisome, but use other reagents --specifically, lots and lots of old time industrial acids, made by burning sulfur. People avoid neighbourhoods where every breath burns, and die quickly if they have to live there, so perhaps no endearing nickname is needed: "The Brickworks." The need for mills is pretty pressing in any large city, but is going to be especially significant in a port town, which is likely to handle a great deal of grain and oilseed. Water mills are going to appear in any riverine setting --even if the run of the current is small, a diversionary canal can bring water in with five or six feet of head, more than enough to run an old time mill. This is going to be the Arsenal neighbourhood, though, so "The Arsenal." Lille, the example that I am thinking of here, and admittedly not a port town, had a substantial heavy wool drapery industry because of water brought in from just up the Deule with no more than a six foot drop between the diversion and the city. It also had a persistent problem with rural shops illegally diverting the water just outside the city limits. In German parlance, these "ground rabbits" were a persistent problem for all medieval cities, and a neighbourhood of temporary homes (the kind that I was envisioning intruding on the fish curing grounds) and temporary shops would be a persistent problem. In tribute to old time German home town xenophobia, perhaps "the Warrens"? If not, windmills work better where there is some kind of relief, because you can pump water uphill into reservoirs when the mills aren't working, but the Dutch and East Anglian examples show they are quite efficient on flat ground. I was casting around for a particularly famous, historic London windmill that obviously isn't that famous, or I would be able to find it, but what I did find is this Wikipedia list of historic windmills in the London area. Most mills took their name from the neighbourhood in which they were located, but there are some interesting cases in which it seems to be the opposite, notably "Battersea," which started out as "Baldric's Sea" before it was drained, mostly by ditching rather than pumping, to be sure, but still a connection. I suspect I would find a number of examples of this around Amsterdam if I looked. I hope this is more useful than my initial posting! assault and DShomshak 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DShomshak Posted May 22, 2021 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2021 Very useful indeed! I was on a "Medieval Commerce" kick for a while, but that was mostly about trade networks; I see my research was far deficient in industry. As it happens, I already had decided that Render House supports a soap industry along with candles and other uses for tallow, so that's an extra reason for keeping salt marshes on the flatter lee side of the spit. Not a nautical neighborhood, but an unexpected bonus bit of information on the city's surroundings. All I'd heard of fulling before this was that it involved fuller's earth; wikipedia tyhis afternoon let me know it's another stench-intensive industry. There's no wat that Fully and Prinks (the milliners' and ribbon-makers' district -- some of that high fashion you suggest) would be right across the street. Fulling also apparently takes a lot of water, even if soap replaces people wading ankle-deep in urine as they trample the cloth. Thalassene is old enough that activities have moved around: Old Vaccary used to be a dairy farm before the city grew around it, Fundus Carduus grew artichokes, etc. So there could well be former Tannery, Fullery and dyeworks districts, but the industries were pushed out of town. And where's the water? Important water-using industries would want first access to the aqueducts. The "New Fullery" could be on the NE side, in Transfossa, and the other stench-intensive industries would likely be placed near it whether they needed fresh water or not. I never would have guessed that brickworks involved anything but baking clay. As I mentioned, though, brickmaking is already placed at a nearby small town. "Brick /town" in Gardens, oddly, has nothing to do with bricks. But also not relevant here. If 6 feet of drop are enough for water mills, then the aqueducts might be sufficient after all. I mention Thalassene is a low-relief city, but 50 feet from the top of the ridgeline to the shore is enough for chains of mills, and the water's still available for drinking and Roman-style bath-houses. I presume that sea water couldn't be pumped up into holding tanks for the mills: I seem to recall that most premodern gearing was wooden, but there'd have to be some metal bits and they'd corrods in no time. And that's an excellent suggestion about water piracy. Reminds me of the illegal tapping of electricity in Mexico City slums. Over time, the city and federal governments just give up, assign title to the land, and regularize the pirated hook-ups. That could make a nice bit of local politicl/economic conflict, between the people who want to license and tax the illicit water access, those who want to stop it, those who are willing to be brought within the law and those who want to keep stealing water. Oh -- burning marsh plants as a fist step in making lye reminds me that, IIRC, seaweed was burned for soda ash, used in glassmaking. I had already decided Tha;assene has a glass industry. It had to, after what I read about trade beads in a book on early money. Big industry in Gauds! I don't think there's be a "seaweed-buring district," but it's another piece of local color. Thank you again! Dean Shomshak Lawnmower Boy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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