2. What is the Domesday book?
• The Domesday book is the first official
record of property owners in England.
• The Domesday book is actually two
independent works, the Little Domesday
and the Great Domesday.
3. The Purpose
• One of the main purposes of the survey
was to determine who held what and
what taxes had been liable under Edward
the Confessor.
• Whatever the book said about who held
the material wealth or what it was worth,
was the law, and there was no appeal.
4. Uses
Used for many centuries for administrative
and legal purposes, the Domesday Book is
the starting point for most local historians
researching the history of their area.
5. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
'all over England into every shire [to] find out how many
hides there were in the shire, what land and cattle the
king had himself in the shire, what dues he ought to have
in twelve months from the shire. Also he had a record
made of how much land his archbishops had, his bishops
and his abbots and his earls, and what or how much
everyone who was in England had.... So very narrowly did
he have it investigated that there was no single hide nor
yard of land, nor indeed ... one ox or cow or pig which was
left out and not put down in his record, and these records
were brought to him afterwards'
6. Importance
It is the oldest public record and one of the
most remarkable statistical document in
the history of Europe.
7. The importance to today’s life
It was similar to a census as carried out
nowadays and its main purpose was to have
a record of all land, property and people in
the country so that taxes could be raised.
