Herefordshire and the Domesday Survey

Why was the Domesday Survey commissioned?

In 1066 King Harold was defeated at the Battle of Hastings by William the Duke of Normandy. On Christmas Day 1066 William was crowned King William I. As King, William granted the lands of the English nobility to his own loyal followers.

As a result of these sudden changes there was now no record of who owned what land throughout the country. For purposes of taxation a record of land ownership needed to be made and so the King commissioned men to be sent to each shire in England to find out what or how much each landholder now owned. A record was also made of what livestock was held on the land, how many ploughs were used and what men lived on it and what it was worth.

There is also a second possible reason for the commissioning of the Domesday Survey. Prior to William's defeat of King Harold there had been a number of other contenders for the throne of England, among these were King Canute of Denmark and King Olaf of Norway. These two men posed quite a threat to William's newly acquired Crown and to ward off possible attacks he created a fund called the 'Danegeld' which was used to pay off marauding Danish armies. This fund was raised by taxes, and so the Domesday Survey may have been commissioned so that King William could see how much tax was coming in and so knew how much was in the 'Danegeld'.

It took 12 months for the Commissioners to gather the information from each shire, which was then copied into 2 books, later known as the Domesday Book. As the information recorded in the Survey was deemed fact it was called the Domesday Book as Domesday refers to the 'day of judgment'. It took only 2 years to compile and publish all the information gathered, a sure testament to the determination and power of William the Conqueror.

How the Domesday Book was created.

'...made a survey of all England; of the lands in each of the counties; of the possessions of each of the magnates, their lands, their habitations, their men, both bond and free, living in huts or with their own houses or land; of ploughs, horses and other animals; of the services and payments due from each and every estate.'
                      - Robert, Bishop of Hereford, one of the ecclesiastics brought to England by King William.-

The Domesday Book was written with a goose quill on parchment made out of sheepskin (known as vellum) that had been vigorously treated. Originally it was written in Latin the language of medieval scholars.

In each district the Commissioners took evidence on oath and made use of a local ‘jury’ to verify facts. In each shire they had to determine:

The name of the place, who owned it before 1066 and who owned it after. The size of the land held. Usually measured in hides, a hide was an area considered large enough to support one family. The measurement varied from 60 to 120 acres depending on the agricultural worth of the land. The number of villagers, cottagers and slaves, how many freemen? How much was woodland, meadowland and pasture. The number of mills and fishponds. The number of plough teams working on the land, 8 oxen usually equalled one team. What the value of the land was before 1066 and what it was after.

As well as the above information the Commissioners would also record any other information that they thought was useful, such as local customs or taxes. Only the chief landowner was named in the Domesday Survey, all other inhabitants were merely counted. There was also no necessity to name individual buildings or castles; those that are mentioned are usually done so for taxation or land value reasons.

The information was collected and collated at Winchester and copied up as a single volume by one writer. Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk were copied into a second volume and the surveys of several towns, including London, were not transcribed.

Herefordshire in the Domesday Survey.

Herefordshire was one of only 16 shire towns ranking as cities. Herefordshire at the time of the Domesday survey appears to contain some villages that are now considered to be in Radnorshire. The hundreds in the Domesday Survey are also not the same as the medieval hundreds that survived into the 19^th century. (A hundred was calculated as one hundred households in an area.)

The Domesday Survey of Herefordshire begins with a record of the customs observed in the county. At the time of the Domesday Survey 103 men lived inside and around the city wall and every dwelling paid 7 ½ d and 4d for the hire of horses. In August each man had to spend three days reaping at Marden and on one day had to gather hay wherever the Sheriff wished.

When the king was in the city every man without a whole dwellling had to provide an escort for the king. When the king was engaged in hunting in the county then by custom one man from every house went to stall game in the woodland.

Inside the city there were 6 smiths and each of them made 120 horseshoes from the king’s iron, for these they were given 3d for each one. The smiths were exempt from any other kind of service.

There are a total of 15 different customs for Herefordshire mentioned in the Domesday Survey all of which would have most probably been strictly adhered to. There are also a further 10 customs for the dependent territory of Archenfield whose population was largely Welsh, and so lived by Welsh customs.

After the discussion of customs in the shire comes the list of landholders in Herefordshire, Archenfield and Wales. The Domesday Survey has a total of 36 different landowners for this area, these include King William, Robert, Bishop of Hereford and 4 churches. Under each landowner the lands that he held are listed by the Hundred.

312 separate places are mentioned in the Domesday Survey for Herefordshire. Of these 15 have very little or no information, 29 cannot be identified as modern places and 105 do appear on modern parish maps, although some are now represented as hamlets or farms.

Some villages on the modern parish map of Herefordshire, such as Abbeydore, Kentchurch, Wacton and Brockhampton, are not mentioned in the Domesday Survey. This is because Abbeydore and Kentchurch weren’t named as villages until the 12^th century and Wacton and Brockhampton not until the 13^th century.

The Domesday Survey had consistent ways of measuring the prosperity and population for most villages and gives us data for each area that is easily comparable. Under most villages four recurring items are found measuring the prosperity of an area. They are:

1. Hides.
2. Plough-teams.
3. Population.
4. Value of the area. (pre and post 1066)

The population of individual villages was also measured and the inhabitants ‘classified’, according to their occupation, as far as possible.

The recorded population for Domesday Herefordshire is:

This gives Herefordshire a population of 4,453 at the time of the Domesday Survey (1086). The Miscellaneous included Welshmen, Freemen , Reeves, Sergeants and Carpenters.

The population was not distributed evenly throughout Herefordshire. in the east of the county the population averaged 8 people per square mile, the west averaged 3 per square mile and the northwest only 1 person per square mile. These figures can be compared with the distribution of plough teams in the county to build a picture of the distribution and settlement in Herefordshire. In the east of the county there were an average of 5 plough teams per square mile, the west 1 per square mile and in the northwest less than 1 per square mile.

This distribution of settlement was caused by two separate factors. The west and northwest of the county was very unsettled being on the Welsh border and the threat of welsh raids was ever present. The topography of the north and west was not conducive to supporting large numbers of people as the soil was poor and difficult to plough and cultivate.

The Domesday Survey was a very useful product of  the Norman's efficient recording. It shows the changes that had occurred to the country under its 'New Management'. Although the major landowners were now foreign very little else had changed in the makeup of the country. In terms of villages, hundreds and regions Herefordshire was the same as it had been before 1066, but now with better organisation. The Survey was so detailed and precise that it was unmatched in Europe for many centuries and can tell us more than most other contemporary sources about the social makeup of England at the beginning of the Medieval period.

MG