ABSTRACT
The Domesday survey of 1086, experimental in form though it might be, had very specific objectives. While designed to untangle at least some of the tenurial complexities which characterized post-Conquest England, an essential purpose was to lay down the terms of a new rating system that would protect and enlarge the king’s revenues. 1 This it could achieve only by counting, for it was on the totalling of rateable units that liability to tax must be assessed, and it is the statistics of Domesday that give it its importance, to the archaeologist no less than to the historian. In itself, of course, the year 1086 had little significance, for much was still subject to change. Yet here, at one point in time, the historical landscape of late-eleventh-century England stands frozen uniquely, and the picture has many surprises.
