Dawn of Doomesday downloading - The Carole Dwyer Feature (From Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Dawn of Doomesday downloading - The Carole Dwyer Feature

12:10pm Friday 11th August 2006

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The day of Domesday downloading has dawned. The 920-year-old document has just gone into cyberspace and the oldest public record in England is now available worldwide.

And it's all down to The National Archives at Kew who have digitized The Domesday Book so it can be searched online.

The launch of the Domesday Book website last Thursday also provided some surprising analogies with our modern day tax system.

According to tax partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, John Whiting, who was a speaker at the archives, the book is the foundation of our modern tax system.

He said William the Conqueror in the 11th century was similar to a corporate raider who, after a difficult shareholders meeting at Hastings, wondered how he could make money out of it.

The King was essentially interested in tracing, recording and recovering his royal rights and revenues which he wished to maximise. It was the threat of invasion from Denmark and the need to pay for a mercenary army which prompted the 1085 survey which made up The Domesday Book. William needed to know how many military and financial recourses he had to defend his kingdom.

The Anglo-Saxon tax referred to in The Domesday Book was the geld tax which was based on the land you owned.

Mr Whiting said it was not very effective. The geld did not raise the money it should and there was avoidance and evasion as some people were not very honest. He said: "The Domesday Book was a proper record of who owned what."

The book not only set out who owned what but how land was transferred. The transfer fee paid 920-years-ago is the equivalent of Inheritance Tax or Stamp Duty paid on property today, he said.

Mr Whiting said: "Her Majesty's Revenues and Customs of the day is based on The Domesday Book."

Mr Whiting said most places dropped in value when the survey was carried out. Just as today council tax payers attempt to have their property given a lower value, so, too, did property owners nearly 1,000 years ago.

They would point out their roof was leaking or the harvest had not been too good that year, said Mr Whiting.

He said: "Some people suppressed their values just as there are those people who argue their household is in a lower band for council tax purposes. It is not so very different now."

Ploughs are listed in The Domesday Book and Mr Whiting asked if this was something they were trying to codify. Taxing the ploughs would have been like today's vehicle excise duty or MoT.

The 11th century might also have seen the beginning of environmental taxes. The number of people using woodland and the number of pigs could have been a measure of trying to control how many pigs used the land so they didn't degrade it.

There was no social security or National Insurance in the time of the Normans but Mr Whiting said the NHS, in a sense, was provided by the Churches and Abbeys which were exempt from tax.

Mr Whiting said the book was completed by one unknown scribe, known only as scribe A, in about a year.

Compiling the online version took much longer. The book itself took years and years to translate and the images of the pages were taken outside in the 1860s by the Ordnance Survey. But since these two elements were already in existence, it took just three to six months to put all the information together to form the website nationalarchives.gov.uk/Domesday.

Domesday specialist, Adrian Ailes, said the book was a public record but not a census. He said: "It is a record of remarkable achievement and there was nothing like this until the 19th century census."

He said the country was divided into seven regions and Royal Commissioners were appointed to each.

Each set of commissioners compiled lists of manors and men and when all this information was collected, they attended special sittings of county courts.

The court sittings were to check the accuracy of their findings. There were jurors, half of them English and half of them French, who were summoned to verify the accuracy under oath.

They had to answer questions like who owned a certain manor, what it was called, how much it was worth in 1066 and how much in 1085.

Mr Ailes said: "It was like the civil service where everything is asked in triplicate."

He said there were two versions of the Domesday Book, Great and Little. Little Domesday was a first draft which recorded information covering Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.

It was never included in Great Domesday and is an unedited version so contains much more detail than that found in Great Domesday which was edited and abbreviated by Scribe A.

Mr Ailes said The Domesday Book also included a snapshot of various customs such as if you killed a man on a Holy Day or a Sunday you were fined £4 but £2 on any other day.

He also said the book revealed that 12 leading barons held one-quarter of the land and in 1066 there was a programme of castle building with 48 built, including Windsor Castle.

Mr Ailes said the book had been rebound several times and had also moved around from its original site in Winchester to Westminster and then Chancery Lane.

But in 1666 it was moved to Nonsuch Palace near Epsom because of the Great Fire of London. During the First World War it spent time at Bodmin prison and during the Second World War it was moved to Shepton Mallet prison to keep it safe from the Blitz.

Mr Ailes described how in the Middle Ages, if people wanted copies made, they were copied in the same 11th century handwriting as the original book, even in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In 1783 there was a clamour for it to be published so the government spent £38,000 in producing a typeface in the same script as The Domesday Book so that the printing, leading and abbreviation marks were reproduced exactly, he said.

The Domesday Book was also used to settle some land disputes. It is a working document and there was a settlement in the 1960s but today any disputes are mainly to do with crown land.

He said: "Today, as the latest stage in its 920-year-old history, the government is keen to make it accessible.

"The world wide web brings it to a much larger audience and the document tells you an enormous amount about England."

More than 90 per cent of towns and villages in The Domesday Book still exist as modern day communities.

For Richmond borough there is mention of Barnes, Mortlake and Petersham.

Mortlake is listed as Mortelage being under the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is under a section titled Brixton Hundred (a hundred was a sub-division of a county) and the translation says: The archbishop himself holds in demesne Mortlake Tre (an abbreviation used in The Domesday Book for the time of King Edward) it was assessed at 80 hides (a hide was a land measurement). The canons of St Paul's hold eight of these hides, which with these others have paid, and do pay, geld (a land tax assessed on the number of hides).

Now they pay geld for 25 hides all together.

There is land for 35 ploughs. In demesne (part of the manor kept as the lord's private property) are five ploughs; and 80 villans (an unfree peasant who owed his lord labour services but who also farmed land for himself) and 14 bordars (an unfree peasant with less land than villans) with 28 ploughs.

There is a church and 16 slaves (a man or woman who was the property of the lord and had no land) and two mills rendering 100s, and 20 acres of meadow. From the woodland, 55 pigs as pannage (a form of payment for pasturing pigs).

The Domesday Book lists Petersham, named as Patricesham, as part of the Abbey of St Peter of Chertsey and the following is included in the translation: The abbey holds in demesne Petersham.

Tre it was assessed at 10 hides; now at four hides. There is land for five ploughs. In demesne is one plough; and 15 villans and two bordars with four ploughs.

There is a church, and a fishery rendering 1,000 eels and 1,000 lampreys and 3 acres of meadow. Tre it was worth 100s now 6 libra (pound) 10s.

Under the land of St Paul's of London and in Brixton Hundred is listed Barnes or Berne.

The entry, translated, reads: The canons of St Paul's of London hold Barnes. Tre it was assessed at eight hides. These hides have paid, and do pay, geld with Mortlake, the archbishop's manor and are accounted for there. There is land for six ploughs. In demesne are two ploughs; and nine villans and four bordars with three ploughs and 20 acres of meadow. Tre it was worth six libra; now 7l.

The celebrated Domesday Book has come a long way. Since its inception 920-years-ago when it was never seen by more than a handful of people at a time, the historic survey can now be viewed by billions.

Meanwhile, the original document lies safely in climate controlled conditions at the National Archives in Kew, ensuring it will survive for hundreds of years more.

l Anyone wishing to see an exact entry for their location will be charged £3.50 per entry.

This includes a copy of the original page in Latin plus the translation.

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