The start of so many towns

Town founders divided their land into plots and built streets and houses on them. In the centre they built a church with a big marketplace that was surrounded by roads; the town itself was encircled by a wall that separated the town’s citizens from outsiders, who could only enter through a heavily guarded gate as visitors or travelling merchants. Radiating from the marketplace were narrow lanes where the different professions plied their trades. These were mostly crafts, so the streets often had names such as Weaver Street, Cobbler Street and Baker Street, and most people couldn’t read, so pictures were used to tell them where they could buy bread or weaving frames.
— Kerstin Lücker & Ute Daenschel, A History of the World with the Women Put Back in

Acknowledgement: The image above is the Town of Bungendore town and suburban allotments : for sale by auction at Bungendore Friday Oct. 17th 1884. It was created by Finlay and Co & Bonney, W. H & Atchison & Schleicher and comes from the National Library of Australia. Details are here.

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