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The information from the circuit summaries was collected and edited down to fit into one final volume, namely Great Domesday. This meant that much of the information such as details of livestock had to be omitted. The scribe probably worked at Winchester, the Anglo-Norman capital in the late 11th century. For some reason Great Domesday was never finished, perhaps because of the death of William the Conqueror in September 1087, although it does contain later information. Also, it may not have even been started until the next reign, that of William Rufus.
Great Domesday covers the English counties not included in Little Domesday (Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk) with some exceptions. It does not include the cities of London and Winchester, nor Bristol and Tamworth. Coverage of the north west of England is limited. The counties of Durham and Northumberland are omitted, and coverage of Cumberland, Westmorland and north Lancashire is confined to lands of the King and the fiefs
of two others. Coverage of south Lancashire is limited. It does however include some border areas of Wales.
Great Domesday is predominantly the work of a single scribe (‘A’) with a second scribe (‘B’) working closely with him, possibly supervising him. Four other scribes made a number of very small additions. Great Domesday was written on parchment (sheepskin) of good quality. The pages were first lined using series of templates. Initially there were 44 lines per page but this was sometimes increased to more than 70. The pens used for the writing were quills made from the primary feathers of birds. The scribe edited and abbreviated as he recorded information from the circuit summaries. Sometimes he left spaces to come back and fill. He also made many corrections.
Like Little Domesday, Great Domesday is arranged by county. Each county begins with a list of landholders – a kind of numbered contents list – followed by a description of any boroughs. This is followed by a description of all the other land held in that county, starting with that held by the King, called in Domesday Terra Regis followed by the lands held by his ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief, lay tenants-in-chief, and finally under-tenants. This follows the same order as that of the numbered list. The holdings of each landowner are listed by manors according to the hundred or wapentake in which they are found.
The Domesday account for the county of Berkshire, for example, begins with the Terra Regis followed by the lands of the bishops of Winchester, Salisbury and Durham, then the lands of the Abbot of Abingdon, and lastly those of the great lay barons starting with the Earl of Evreux. Each of their lands, like those of the King, are divided into hundreds and then subdivided into the manors held. The place-names are scored through with a red line rather like we underline today or use a highlighter. If the scribe forgot to add something he went back and squeezed it in either between existing entries or in the margins.
Great Domesday was probably not started much before the summer of 1086. It may have abruptly been stopped in September 1087 when William died and was succeeded by his son William Rufus. If it was Rufus who commissioned Domesday Book itself then writing may not have ceased until as late as 1090. Either way it probably took between 17 and 24 months to write up and consists of 413 leaves made of parchment.
