Although it is the buildings on the peninsula which give Durham its distinctive appearance today, as they did in the medieval period, they were entirely untypical of the character of the medieval town which lay beyond the castle and cathedral walls. The greatest feats of medieval architecture and engineering were devoted to improving Durham's defences against the Scots and to glorifying God in the magnificence of the cathedral. However, the majority of Durham's inhabitants lived and worked in a less elevated sphere in the small and undistinguished market town huddling below the castle walls which is the subject of this study. There were few houses or public buildings of any character in medieval Durham. Most were single-storied, small, wooden and thatched. They were places of work as well as family homes, overcrowded and completely lacking in privacy, a prey to fire damage or flooding. It is these buildings which are surveyed in this chapter.

Such a general survey of Durham's domestic buildings reveals graphically the parts of the urban area which were most popular with tenants and thus heavily populated. Some streets – for example, Crossgate, Clayport, Fleshewergate, Sadlergate and New Elvet – seem to have had a continuous line of housing along both sides of the road throughout the medieval period. These streets, it can be argued, were those where frontages were most valuable and where, on commercial grounds, those with trading or manufacturing interests wanted to live.