Domesday Book

Domesday Book (/ˈduːmzdeɪ/ or US /ˈdoʊmzdeɪ/;Latin: Liber de Wintonia "Book of Winchester") is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states:

It was written in Medieval Latin, was highly abbreviated, and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to determine what taxes had been owed during the reign of King Edward the Confessor.

The assessors' reckoning of a man's holdings and their values, as recorded in Domesday Book, was dispositive and without appeal. The name Domesday Book (Middle English for Doomsday Book) came into use in 12th century. As Richard FitzNeal wrote circa 1179 in the Dialogus de Scaccario:

The manuscript is held at The National Archives at Kew, London. In 2011 the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online.

The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians and historical economists. No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday") which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the British Isles.

Domesday (disambiguation)

Domesday may refer to:

See also