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Market town is a legal term, originating in the medieval period, for a European settlement that has the right to hold markets. This distinguishes it from a village, usually smaller, than a city. A town may be correctly described as a market town even if it no longer holds a market, provided the right to do so still exists.

England

In England, even up to the 19th century, the majority of people lived off the land, and relatively few in towns. Market towns were an important feature of rural life, as some place names remind us: Market Drayton, Market Harborough, Chipping Norton and Chipping Sodbury — chipping being derived from a Saxon verb meaning to buy.

Market towns often grew up close to fortified places, such as castles, in order to enjoy their protection, for example Framlingham in Suffolk. They tended to be located where transport was easiest: for example, at a crossroads or close to a river ford.

The most obvious feature of the traditional market town is a very wide main street or market place, with room for stalls and booths to be set up on market days. A market cross often stood in the centre of the town, as a way of obtaining God's blessing on the trade. The best remaining examples of market crosses in England are at Chichester and Malmesbury. There would often be a market hall, with administrative quarters at first floor level, above the covered market. Market towns with smaller status include Minchinhampton, Nailsworth and Painswick near Stroud, Gloucestershire.

Colchester claims to be England's oldest recorded market to close history.

A market town may or may not have rights concerning self-government, which is the usual meaning of "town". In England, towns with such rights may be are usually distinguished with the additional status of Borough).

German language area

The right to hold markets is similarly recollected in the names of many towns in Germany and Austria which have the prefix Markt, for example Markt Berolzheim and Marktl am Inn. Other terms used for market towns were Flecken or Marktflecken.

The status of market towns (Marktgemeinde) still has some legal significance in Bavaria, Austria, and Alto Adige/Südtirol.

Norway

In Norway the medieval market town (Norwegian kjøpstad from the old Norse kaupstaðr) is a Norwegian town which had been granted commerce privileges by the king or other authorities. The citizens in the town had a monopoly over the purchase and sale of wares and operation of other businesses, both in the town and in the surrounding district.

Market towns were first created in Norway in the 12th century to encourage businesses to be concentrated around specific towns. Import and export was to be conducted only through market towns to allow oversight on commerce and to simplify imposition of excise taxes and customs duties. It served to encourage growth in areas which had strategic significance, providing a local economic base for construction of fortifications and population for defense of the area. It also served to restrict Hanseatic League merchants from trading in areas other than those designated.

Norway included a subordinate category to the market town, the small seaport (Norwegian lossested or ladested), which was a port or harbor with a monopoly to import and export goods and materials in both the port and for a surrounding outlying district. Typically these were locations for exporting timber and importing grain and goods. Local farm goods and timber sales were all required to pass through merchants at either a small seaport or a market town prior to export. This incentivized local merchants to assure trading went through them, which was so effective in limiting unsupervised sales (smuggling) that customs revenues increased from <30% of the total tax revenues in 1600 to >50% of the total taxes by 1700.

Norwegian “market towns” died out and were replaced by free markets in the 1800s. After 1952 both the “small seaport” and the “market town” have simple town status.

Equivalents in other areas

• in Croatian: trgovišće
• in Czech: městys, městečko
• in Danish: købstad
• in Finnish: kauppala
• in Hungarian: mezőváros
• in Romanian: târg
• in Swedish: köping

Reference

A Revolution from Above; The Power State of 16th and 17th Century Scandinavia; Editor: Leon Jesperson; Odense University Press; Denmark; 2000

• Market towns in England
• Markets
• Town