How was the Domesday Book compiled?
Royal commissioners were dispatched around England to survey thousands of settlements; the country was split up into 7 regions or ‘circuits’ of the country. They carried with them a set of questions and put these to a jury of representatives – made up of barons and villagers alike – from each county. They wrote down all of the information in Latin, as with the final Domesday document itself. Once they returned to London the information was combined with earlier records, from both before and after the Conquest, and was then, circuit by circuit, entered into the final Domesday Book.
