No, not the racism-trufflers favourite of British Imperialism being to blame for all the worlds ills or an excuse for the twirly moustache knuckleheads to bang on about railways, but rather the far more interesting colonial conquest of England itself.
The 4th of August see's the online launch of the Domesday Book, William the Conquerors mahoosive audit of England compiled in 1086, 20 years after he had defeated the English led by Harold (Who incididentally, had just got back from the North after giving the biggest ever Viking invasion fleet a damn good hiding) and become King of England. Whereupon he promptly set about establishing his Barons as landowners over the defeated English, establishing a French-speaking elite of around 10,000 Norman aristocrats and noting everything down so he could tax, tax and tax again.
The Book (Or rather books as there are two of them) contain an almost complete audit of every person in England, their status, their land, their dwellings, their livestock, their worth, their due taxes and all noted down on more than 800 parchment pages containing the names of 13,418 places.
According to Dr Stephen Baxter, lecturer in medieval history at Kings College, London, and an expert on the book. "Between 80 and 90 per cent of all villages named in the book are still in existence."
So, if the site doesn't crash under the weight of visits, have a look and see if if you can find some of your own history sitting in the pages of the Domesday Book, and also see if the story of there being a medieval Grocer named Tesco is true or not..
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment