Historians have become increasingly aware of the importance of small towns in medieval England, but there are still relatively few individual case-studies. Often the lack of surviving evidence makes a detailed examination of such a town impossible, and where documentation survives it may so vary from town to town that comparison becomes more difficult. We must therefore warmly welcome this study of an important well-documented small town, Chepyng Walden, or, as it is now, Saffron Walden, in north-west Essex. Dr Allan's study focuses on the period 1438–90 and is particularly based on a fine and largely complete set of court rolls (1438–89) and the churchwardens’ accounts (1438–90), supported by other material.

Dr Allan begins by setting Walden in the context of the towns of the surrounding area, overlapping the counties of Cambridge, Hertfordshire, Essex and Suffolk. It lay at the intersection of different landscapes, and with access to the main route between London and Norwich. Its establishment may have been aided by the presence of a castle and a nearby monastery. It rose dramatically in the later Middle Ages from a relatively small town in the tax assessments of 1334 to one of much greater importance in those of 1524–5, when it was one of the most wealthy and substantial towns in the area.

The town possessed a sophisticated urban economy during the period of study, with a wide range of occupations from barbers, a cluster of priests and several innkeepers to a surprisingly and significant number of glaziers, as well as the more common food traders and leather workers. The cloth industry was evidently important but not apparently dominant, at least in the documentation. Like most of the towns in the area, those that showed the greatest growth lay in or adjacent to the cloth-producing area. But the precise role of the town in the industry seems unclear from the documentation. There were a few dyers and numerous dyehouses, and by the 1470s at least five mercers, but seemingly few weavers or fullers. Another common theme that already stands out by 1490 was the evident, and growing, importance of the role of London trade and its merchants.

Saffron cultivation, both labour intensive and of high value, was a local specialism, important enough for it to figure in contemporary illustrations and carvings and eventually to give its name to the town. Saffron's importance is evident in the documentation for the town, listed here. It is suggested that this was primarily for cooking and medicinal use, rather than a dyestuff.

The prosperity of the town is still reflected in its buildings. Thirty-eight houses have been dated to the sixteenth century. The parish church was extended in the fifteenth century, with interesting material included on the building industry. But the main rebuilding of the church occurred after the end of the documents. Individual display was visible in a more transient form in the consumer goods recorded in contemporary wills.

The treatment of the work of the courts provides an account of their varied activities and offences, their limitations, the interaction of the town with its hinterland and the role of the wealthy elites. Something of the corporate activity of the town is seen in its guilds, its almshouse and of course the church and its rebuilding.

How far were things changing at the end of the fifteenth century as the main sources cease? The difficulties of the mid-century had been overcome. There had already been signs of further change by the end of the period, as in the increasing documented activities of mercers and of widening markets, or the growing role of the wealthy in the Gild of the Holy Trinity. Change continued in the following century with the formal establishment of the guild in 1514, and in the subsequent creation of a new school. Does the massive and lavish scale of rebuilding of the church reflect further dramatic change in the town's fortunes, although still very much based on earlier advances?

We must be grateful to Dr Allan and the Saffron Walden Historical Society for making this important research available and at a modest price. The book is well illustrated with a wide range of maps, graphs and photographs.