'The extensive foundations and lines of streets which have been discovered by excavating, show that Stow was once a place of considerable importance'. {1} It was focused on the Church of St Mary. In 1086 the settlement bore many of the marks of an administrative and economic centre, or core of a large episcopal estate, with 3 iron works recorded, and other estates holding tofts and mansions without land there. The morphology has been somewhat distorted by recent emphasis on a north/south through road, but at the settlement's core is a roughly rectangular block that encompasses the church at its north-west corner. {1}{2}{3}{4}{5} At Stow the importance of the village as the centre of a late Saxon estate as well as the existence of the Saxon minster church would perhaps suggest an early marketing function as well, a hypothesis supported by its description in Domesday Book. A formal market certainly existed by the later 12th century and may have been an old establised feature by then. Though the morphology of the village has clearly been much altered, nevertheless on the south side of the church is a former open area, containing several islands of properties. This was perhaps a market place, now largely infilled.{8}