Domesday Book

Domesday Book is one of the most famous documents in English history – and arguably, in world history. Now available in one volume, here is the complete, authoritative translation from the original Latin of Domesday Book, together with an index of places and a glossary of terms used.

Domesday was compiled in a matter of months in 1086, at the end of William the Conqueror’s life. According to a first-hand account by Robert, Bishop of Hereford, those sent out by the king ‘… made a survey of all England; of the lands in each of the counties; of the possessions of each of the magnates, their lands, their habitations, their men’. The detailed picture of the English landscape it offers has no equal in any country, while it is valuable not only in the picture it allows local historians to construct of their area in the eleventh century but also as the foundation document of the national archives.