The modern town and its crafts

Mentions of repair work in the abbey's account books are our main source of information about crafts in the early modern year. Those from the period 1535-1536 concern the monastic buildings; they detail the construction materials purchased and list the merchants and craftspeople that performed the work: glaziers, plumbers, plasterers, woodworkers, painters, masons, laborers, and locksmiths. Most of these people lived in Saint-Denis. Others lived in Paris, including a potter, a nail-maker and a carpenter. A merchant selling "large" glass (window glass) came from Martagny, in Normandy.

Archaeology offers an incomplete vision of urban crafts during this period, a vision basically centered on worked bone. Four waste pits belonging to bead-makers' workshops have been discovered. Metalworking activity is attested to by the discovery of a bronze foundry, whose furnace was located about a hundred meters north of the basilica.