Internet resources: UK Domesday Database launched online

11 August 2010
Source: ResourceShelf

A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and King’s College, London have unveiled the result of its joint efforts — a database, dedicated to the history of England of 11th c., namely its social, economic and demographic development on the eve and in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest in 1066.

An online resource “PASE Domesday” has for the first time linked information from the Domesday survey (1086), the first major land survey in Medieval Europe, launched in England in 1085-1086 on the order of William the Conqueror, to maps showing the location of estates throughout England.

The resource comprises a large database of landholdings in England in 11th c. which can be explored in the form of tables and maps either directly online, or offline using free-available GIS software.  Visitors can find out who owned their town or village, create maps and tables of the estates held by the same lords elsewhere in England, and examine the scale of the dispossession of the English by the Normans following the conquest of 1066. The new database is freely available on http://domesday.pase.ac.uk/.