THE DOMESDAY SURVEY

The Challenge

When we began this project, we naturally looked for anomalies in the parish boundary as these surely had a story to tell. One of the most striking occurs on the shared boundary between Grove and West Hanney. Our investigation here led us to the Domesday Survey of 1086 and on to an exploration of eleventh century landscape and society.

We set out to discover:

• Why is there an anomaly in the parish boundary at the northern end of Grove and what is this able to tell us about landholding and the process of setting out boundaries to define communities and their resources?
• What can the Domesday Survey tell us about how in the late eleventh century communities within our study area shared and organised land and resources?