Defensible houses built within the confines of a town or city. Some of these were the houses of wealthy but relatively low status merchants who could hold considerable sums of precious goods and money at home so would have been strongly built; others were owned by wealthy, but relatively modest social status, civil servants (usually clerics). A few were town houses of nobles (The London town houses of the various bishops are record under palaces.) Because towns are so heavily redeveloped very few of these buildings survive and even contemporary medieval documents only rarely mention them and even less often described these houses.