AD 1066-1500 Late medieval

During this period central England remained mostly agricultural. There was no major city, but there were prosperous small towns, and great castles like Peverill in the north, Ludlow in the west, and Kenilworth in the south. Because of its geographical position, the region was continually crossed by armies, from Edward I’s conquest of Wales in AD 1282-3, to the Wars of the Roses in 1455-87.

Central England was severely depopulated by epidemics of the Plague, also known as the Black Death, and by the end of the 14th century hundreds of villages lay deserted. Arable land (for growing crops) was turned into pasture, which needed fewer people to work on it. Wool had been a valuable product since the 13th century and in the 14th century, the English cloth-making industry developed. Villages and towns sited near fast-flowing streams than could run the fulling mills (for washing cloth) thrived.

William I gave great tracts of land on the Welsh border to powerful barons like the Mortimers. The earls of Warwick and Gloucester had major power bases in the region. From the time of the rebellion of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, in 1263-4, the region was a theatre for aristocratic power politics. The majority of the battles fought in the Wars of the Roses (1455-87) took place there.