Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology

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DOING A PARISH HISTORY

A GUIDE TO LOCAL BOOKS AND OTHER SOURCES

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5. The Domesday Survey

The Domesday Survey is such a wonderful, although difficult source, that the beginner should attempt to extract from it the major features of landownership and population for his parish. This knowledge will then act as a benchmark for what comes later.

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See also List 1a for Hill and List 1b for vols. III-IV of the History of Lincolnshire; List 2 for Bennett and Bennett (maps 17, 18, 22); List 4 for Everson et. al.

G. Bryant Domesday Book, How to Read it and What it Means Waltham, 1985. This book is based on the entries for Waltham, and to a lesser extent the whole of the Haverstoe wapentake, but is also of great interest for its interpretation and guidance.
H. C. Darby, ed. The Domesday Geography of Eastern England Cambridge, 1952, with later edns. A long chapter on Lincolnshire. Its excellent series of maps compliments Foster and Longley, see below.
C. W. Foster and T. Longley, eds. The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey Lincoln Record Society, vol. 19 (1921), 1924. This edition is preferred to the edition by Morgan and Thorn, which in my view is less user-friendly, and has some misleading quirks in its translation from the Latin (eg, freemen instead of sokemen). For parishes in Lindsey there is the additional bonus of information from the Lindsey Survey of 1115-18, but the detail is not as great as in Domesday Book, and not so consistent from one area to another. It is set out primarily not by landholders, but by wapentakes (ancient administrative districts containing varying numbers of settlements), with the holdings of individuals shown in such a way that their location is sometimes vague.
P. Morgan and C. Thorn, eds. Domesday Book, 31: Lincolnshire Chichester, 1986, 2 vols. See under Foster and Longley.

Below, the entries for Stapleford, taken from Foster and Longley, are typical of what the Domesday Survey has to offer. Some of the material is quite technical and the beginner needs the help of the books cited above. But it is possible to see straightaway that there were two manors in Stapleford, a church had been built and there was substantial agricultural activity. It is possible to make a population estimate by multipying the number of peasant households (villeins, bordars and sokemen) by the accepted figure of five - in Stapleford's case (3 + 1+ 27) x 5 = 31 x 5 = 153, say, about 150 people.

Example of entry for STAPLEFORD in Foster and Langley's book:

Entry 4/79 - one of the Bishop of Bayeux's holdings:

M. In Stapleforde Turuert had two carucates of land [assessed] to the geld. There is land for one team. Tor, the bishop's man, has one team there [in demesne], and three villeins and one bordar ploughing with six oxen. There are one-and-a-half furlongs of meadow. T R E it was worth 20 shillings; now the like amount.

Entry 56/9 - one of the holdings of the Countess Judith:

M. In Stapleforde Morcar had 10 carucates of land [assessed] to the geld. There is land for five teams. Osbern has of the countess two teams there [in demesne], and 27 sokemen on six carucates and six bovates of this land and three villeins and three bordars with seven teams. There is a priest there, and a church, with half a carucate of this land. And there are five furlongs of meadow in length and 60 perches in breadth. T R E it was worth seven pounds; now 8 pounds; tallage 40 shillings.

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