In late medieval England, as later, ‘wealth in towns was distributed with extreme inequality’. At Cirencester, the wealthy elite and the most substantial shopkeepers and tradesmen lived close to the market; the poorest lived in tenements, cottages and hovels stretched along the roads that led southwest out of the market-place towards Cricklade, Tetbury, Bristol and Bath, and west across the Wolds towards Gloucester. In a military assessment of 1522, 34 men in ‘Chipping Street’ (then more commonly known as Dyer Street), along which travellers from London entered the town, were assessed as holding £1,260 in goods and stock. Dyer Street was Cirencester's High Street; its residents were the wealthiest. Travellers entering the town from (or travelling to) Northleach, Burford, Oxford, Reading and London passed a great cross situated ‘near the extremity of the borough, at the first stream of water’, proceeding along Dyer Street to its opening into the still-spacious market-place in front of the church. In 1522 the taxpayers of Dyer ward paid far more tax than those of Abbot Street (9 men, £120), Cricklade Street (9 men, £121), Gosditch Street (16 men, £293), St Cecily Street (4 men, £8), Castle Street (7 men, £152) and St Lawrence Street (6 men, £3). The size of the place was such that no-one in the parish (more extensive than the town) lived more than ten minutes away from the centre.