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The Domesday Book
and Other Norman Manuscripts

A-Z How to Find Information > Special Topics Archive> The Normans

National Archives - Domesday

  • Corfe CastleA richly illustrated site explaining how the Domesday Book was created
  • It describes the people, landscape and society of 11th century England
  • You can also search and download (for a charge) colour images of Domesday pages

PASE Domesday

  • In the Domesday Book, land-holdings and names of land-owners are listed in separate counties, but the new database PASE Domesday enables you to search a place or a landowner across the whole of England at once
  • You can compare land ownership as listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 with land ownership at 1066 so as to show how ownership changed after the Norman Conquest
  • The database also links the Domesday land ownership information to maps
  • There is a link to a step-by-step guide to the database on the PASE Domesday search page
  • PASE Domesday is part of the web site PASE, the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, which aims to list all Anglo-Saxons for whom any records survive

Domesday Explorer Web Site

  • On the Domesday Explorer Web Site - click 'Download Domesday Book'. You then have two choices for downloading a translation of the Domesday Book
  • One option is to click the link to the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), where you can download a translation in Access or Tab
  • The other option, which is more simple, is to click the link to the University of Hull, where you can download a translation in plain text and also easily see county introductions and other related material
  • After clicking the University of Hull link, scroll down to 'Popular collections' and click the 'Domesday dataset' link
  • At the next University of Hull page, the 'Translation' option is at the end of the menu. For any menu option, click the folder icon at the left; on the next page click the page icon at the left; on the next page scroll down and click the 'download' link

British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts

  • British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts - Find and view descriptions and images of medieval manuscripts in the British Library, one of the richest collections in the world
  • To find manuscripts of the Norman period, click 'Advanced search', then in the 'Place of origin' field type England and in the 'Dated between' fields enter 1066 and 1155

Durham Cathedral Muniments

  • The Durham Cathedral Muniments is a selection of medieval documents - images of manuscripts arranged in chronological sections so you can easily view examples for the Norman period

Other Online Sources

  • Internet Medieval Sourcebook - - Medieval Legal History Page
    Scroll down to the 'English Law' section for links to excerpts from Norman legal documents. See, for example, 'Laws of William the Conqueror'
  • Find more web sites on medieval manuscripts at WebLinks History

Return to The Normans for more topics

 

Page last updated: 17th May 2021