1086 Domesday Book

Domesday Book (latin: Liber de Wintonia) is a manuscript record of the great survey, completed in 1086 on orders of William the Conqueror, of much of England and parts of Wales. The survey's key purpose was to determine what taxes had been owing under Edward the Confessor. The manuscript is held at The National Archives, London. In 2011, the Open Domesday site made the manuscript freely available for the first time. No survey approaching the scope and extent of the Domesday Book was attempted until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed the "Modern Domesday") which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the British Isles.