ABSTRACT
The English landscape is scattered, all over the country, with scores and indeed hundreds of places which at one time in their history acquired the right, usually by a grant from the Crown, to hold markets and fairs. In some cases the commercial functions ultimately ousted agriculture completely, and this is how the majority of the modern English towns have originated, great cities like Birmingham, for example, as much as little towns like Market Harborough. A great new market place was laid out along side the railway itself, outside the old town centre, and several little neighbouring towns, which had hitherto shared the expanding cattle and sheep trade of Kent, rapidly died out as agricultural markets. The comparative study of communities in different areas may be said, then, to be one of the basic tasks of English local history as we study it at Leicester.
