Domesday Book Archives - Mark Lord's - Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Science Fiction

I blogged about the fantastic Pase Domesday project yesterday, which is an online reference tool to access data about people and places from the Domesday Book.

What I should have mentioned as well is what seems to not be available from Pase Domesday, which is all the detail of what customs and fees are owed by each manor and borough, and also what resources they had – for instance how many plough teams, how many acres of woodland etc. All of this fascinating content is available elsewhere though and can be downloaded from:

University of Hull

The Economic and Social Data Service

You should be able to access everything in MS Access from these downloads.

Historic site: Domesday details mapped (bbc.co.uk)
TV review: Domesday, Madness In The Fast Lane and Help! My House Is Falling Down (guardian.co.uk)

We seem to have a Norman theme today!

You can now search the Domesday Book online thanks to the PASE Domesday project run by King’s College, London and the University of Cambridge.

Here’s a sample output for the town where I grew up (click on the image to see it in detail):

You can also look up people and get map views as well. Previously the data was available as a downloadable file, but the online version looks very user friendly as well, so I’m sure this resource will be very valuable to anyone interested in that period. Even as a historian who is interested in later events (14c) some of the detail about manors is very interesting to look at as there aren’t similarly comprehensive records available for the later Middle Ages.