Domesday is our most famous and earliest surviving public record. It is a highly detailed survey and valuation of land holding and resources in late 11th century England. The survey was a massive enterprise, and the record of that survey, Domesday Book, was a remarkable achievement. There is nothing like it in England until the censuses of the 19th century.

The Discover Domesday exhibition explains why Domesday was created and how you can interpret it. You can learn how the survey was carried out, what questions were asked, how the findings were written up and how its legacy has been preserved for more than 900 years.

Historical context

In 1066 William Duke of Normandy defeated the Anglo-Saxon King, Harold II, at the Battle of Hastings and became King of England. In 1085 England was again threatened with invasion, this time from Denmark. William had to pay for the mercenary army he hired to defend his kingdom. To do this he needed to know what financial and military resources were available to him.

At Christmas 1085 he commissioned a survey to discover the resources and taxable values of all the boroughs and manors in England. He wanted to discover who owned what, how much it was worth and how much was owed to him as King in tax, rents, and military service. A reassessment of the tax known as the geld took place at about the same time as Domesday and still survives for the south west. But Domesday is much more than just a tax record. It also records which manors belonged to which estates and gives the identities of the King’s tenants-in-chief who owed him military service in the form of knights to fight in his army. The King was essentially interested in tracing, recording and recovering his royal rights and revenues which he wished to maximise. It was also in the interests of his chief barons to co-operate in the survey since it set on permanent record the tenurial gains they had made since 1066.

We know that from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that William commissioned the survey (descriptio) at his Christmas court in 1085. Most historians believe that he always intended the results of this survey to be written up in Domesday Book, although some scholars have argued that it was William the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus, who actually ordered the book itself to be written. Whatever the case, the Conqueror threw the full weight of his administrative machinery into the initial survey.

Why is it called ‘Domesday’?

The word ‘Domesday’ does not appear in the book itself. A book written about the Exchequer in c.1176 (the Dialogus de Sacarrio) states that the book was called ‘Domesday’ as a metaphor for the day of judgement, because its decisions, like those of the last judgement, were unalterable. For many centuries Domesday was regarded as the authoritative register of ancient landholding and was used mainly for that purpose. It was called Domesday by 1180. In the medieval period Domesday was also known as the Winchester Roll or King’s Roll, and sometimes as the Book of the Treasury.