How Peasants Traveled in Medieval Times

Jason Kingsley OBE of Modern History TV explained the manner in which peasants traveled during Medieval times.

Many people think that medieval peasants lived worked and died in exactly the same place. Well that’s not actually true they travel the surprisingly large amount and for all sorts of different reasons. …Now if you were poor didn’t have a horse didn’t have a beast of burden there’s a fair chance that your travel was going to be on foot

It turns out, there was a method of foot travel that relied on footpaths, road markers, and word of mouth. Eventually, the roads were given the name of the town where the road terminates.

For example in Oxford, there is a road called London Road which goes to London.  That same road becomes Oxford Street when you get to London so if you get to London. If you want to go to Oxford you take exactly the same road but from the perspective of London. So an awful lot of roads in England are still named after the destination so makes it quite straightforward.