Domesday Book
manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086
Domesday Book ( DOOMZ-day; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales historically believed to have been completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror, though recent research by Medievalist professor Carol Symes indicates that this book might have been completed as late as 1098 to 1114. The manuscript was originally known by the Latin name Liber de Wintonia, meaning "Book of Winchester", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every shire in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him.
Written in Medieval Latin, it was highly abbreviated and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose was to record the annual value of every piece of landed property to its lord, and the resources in land, labour force, and livestock from which the value derived.
The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century. Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario (c. 1179) that the book was so called because its decisions were unalterable, like those of the Last Judgment, and its sentence could not be quashed.
The manuscript is now held at the National Archives in Kew, London. Domesday was first printed in full in 1783, and in 2011 the Open Domesday website made the manuscript available on the Internet.
The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians, especially economic historians.
The public source identifies “Domesday Book” as manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Domesday, Book and manuscript.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19867. VIAF identifies the subject as 174988839. The Library of Congress control number is n81063021. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1086, 1098, 1114 and 1085.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Domesday Book” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.