In the early Middle Ages, craftsmen served their most local village populations and were far less specialized than later. Smiths who worked iron tended to handle smelting and refining, and then made all of the basic iron implements like edges for plowshares or heads for spears. Weapon making was the first specialization, but even then, swordsmiths were uncommon and only found near royalty. The same rule generally applied to all trades, and many crafts were still based in the home, like spinning and weaving.
Towns were first established as feudal-free zones, allowing craftsmen to devote all of their time to business without needing to go cut the lord’s hay or mend his stone walls. So from the start, they were congregations of, by and for craftsmen. Most towns were organized around craft zones according to what each one needed, such as water or wood. Town centers and roads grew up around the needs of tradesmen.
By the late Middle Ages, trades had specialized to a high degree and had formal structures. Life in one of these trades followed a mapped out pathway: apprenticeship, journeyman (in some trades), junior partner, senior partner, guild official, and maybe at the end, head of the guild or even mayor of the town (elected from among the guild chiefs). A craftsman would rarely leave his town, since specialized merchants handled distance sales. Most craftsmen had a shop window with a shutter that hinged at the bottom, opening into a counter. Town ordinances specified how far into the street a shop was allowed to move display tables or awnings. When these rules weren’t strict enough, precious little sunlight reached the ground.
Prosperous guilds built freestanding, single-purpose guild halls in imitation of manor halls. Guilds held regular meetings to regulate their trade, so they needed a large room with tables to hold everyone. A good guild hall also had quite a kitchen out back, and even a chest full of musical instruments (eventually, guilds developed those European town bands of the early modern period). Poor guilds had to rent space or borrow church halls.
The guild members divided up the work of approving new members (usually local apprentices as they graduated) and overseeing the town’s craft products. Weights and measures were hugely important in the Middle Ages. Cities had officials whose only job was making sure that the weights and measures used around town all matched the official set. Guilds had sets to match to individual shops, and they carried out frequent random checks so that their craft would not get a bad reputation. Every shop marked its products, from bread to bricks to hats, and every guild inspected and imposed fines. Essentially, so much of the town’s governance took place right at this level that elected government naturally evolved out of the guild structure.
Guilds helped their elderly and sick members. They also paid for funerals and tried to help guild widows if possible. They had other social functions, like parades and plays. Some towns had an annual fundraiser in which each guild hosted a piece of one long religious drama. The one held on Corpus Christi Day (mid-summer) in York, England, was the most famous and perhaps most highly developed. It has been recreated in modern times.