We're getting into the realms of mediaeval town planning!
The typical mediaeval European town had a main street, often widening in the middle to accommodate church and/or market place. Houses along the street usually had a narrow strip of land extending away from the street at right angles towards the open land outside the town. Often, these strips of land were separated by lanes that gave access between street and open land.
Over time, more houses were built on the strips of land behind the main street, so you got a close extending parallel to the lanes, with houses along them in a line at right angles to the street. It was common for this 'close' to be known by the name of the owner, tenant or occupier of the original strip of land.
Also, in many cases, the town was surrounded by a defensive wall for protection.
The examples that spring to mind include Edinburgh, Montrose, Elgin and Forres in Scotland, Landshut in Bavaria, and Košice and Levoca in Slovakia, but there are thousands of them all over Europe, and if you look carefully at many modern cities you can still see the evidence of the mediaeval layout in spite of developments and redevelopments and intrusion of motor vehicles.
Here
http://maps.nls.uk/view/74400028 is a plan of Elgin, which illustrates the classic layout rather well. It also, as a bonus, names the owners of each close.
And
http://maps.nls.uk/view/102190471 is a similar plan of Edinburgh, but also shows the sharp contrast between the Old Town and the late 18th century New Town. I like
http://maps.nls.uk/view/74414281 for its little drawings of the houses, and for the illustrations of the layouts of the gardens. It also shows that while all the strips of land in Edinburgh itself were pretty much built over, the ones in the Canongate (to the right of the main crossroads) were only just beginning to be filled in. (The NLS web site suggests that this dates from about 1814, but the complete absence of the New Town suggests to me that it has to be earlier.)
