Wintertown

The winter town lies under Winterfell’s walls, its market square just outside the main gate. Its houses are small and kept neat, built of logs and rough stone, each with its own chimney, and its streets are mud. In summer four houses in five stand empty, their shutters closed.

Then the snows come. Crofters and villagers walk in from the holdings with what they own, men of the mountain clans come down from the hills, and the town fills to the eaves. The castle shelters the smallfolk of its lands through the worst of the cold, as it has for longer than anyone can count.

In the middle of the market square there is a well, and the inn, the Smoking Log, keeps its door open all year. The edge of the wolfswood is two miles off.