Chapter I - THE DOMESDAY INQUEST

Summary

The Norman Conquest in 1066, unlike the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian invasions, was not a mass movement of people but the work of a small power group. Twenty years after their coming, the Normans instituted the enquiry that resulted in Domesday Book. With hindsight we can say that it came at a fortunate moment for us because it enables us to examine the economic and social foundations of the geography of England after the Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians had firmly established themselves in their new home.

THE ANGLO-SCANDINAVIAN BACKGROUND

The Anglo-Saxons had arrived in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the Scandinavians in the eighth and ninth – Danes from the east and Norse by way of the western seas. Whatever the continuity between Roman Britain and Anglo-Scandinavian England – and it was certainly much greater than was at one time believed – the fact remains that, Cornwall apart, the villages the Normans encountered bore names that were certainly not Celtic. Where the Englishman Babba had made a ‘stoc’ or settlement in Wiltshire, there stood Babestoche in 1066 which is Baverstock today; and where the Scandinavian Bekki had made a ‘by’ or settlement in Lincolnshire, there stood Bechebi which is Bigby today. The progress of settlement must have been interrupted, time and again, by the mutual struggles of the Anglo-Saxon states, and by the campaigns of the Anglo-Danish conflict; but, even so, large stretches of countryside were colonised and transformed, and the woodland was pierced by ‘dens’ and ‘leans’ and ‘skogrs’ until there were well over 13,000 vills in existence.