Certain towns and cities have their origins in the medieval period. The original plan of these medieval centres is often reflected in the street pattern, focused around a broad market place and its tolbooth, with a church or castle in the immediate vicinity. Ancient property boundaries may also survive, narrow and set at right angles to the main street(s), being all of similar breadth and extending for a considerable distance into the backlands of the burgh.
Not all medieval burghs survive. Some were deserted and are visible only as earthworks or cropmarks, as at Roxburgh in the Scottish Borders.
The narrow properties of the burgh of Culross, Fife, which are picked out by the hedgerows in this air photograph, are typical of a medieval burgh. Only those burghs listed in Pryde's 1965 publication 'The burghs of Scotland', feature in HLA data. Their full extent can be further clarified by studying maps such as Roy's 1747-55 Military Survey of Scotland in the National Library of Scotland.
HES DP014181
