The Domesday Book
and Other Norman Manuscripts

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

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 - 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

Discover the history and decoding of the forms of Medieval handwriting used in medieval manuscripts in a fun way through interactive exercises using samples of old scripts in public collections
Enter the site. For a fascinating survey of different types of documents click as follows: click the menu section 'The Written Word', scroll down and click 'Types of Documents', scroll down and click 'Categories of documents'. Under the heading 'Governmental records' there is a specific section for the Domesday Book
The menu section 'The Concept of Literacy' covers the extent and meaning of reading and writing in the period

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

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'
Medieval Literature - find more web sites on medieval manuscripts at WebLinks
Old Handwriting - Discover sites on how to decipher old manuscripts at WebLinks

Page last updated: 3rd December 2013

The Domesday Bookand Other Norman Manuscripts