Urban-rural connections in Domesday Book and the late Anglo-Saxon town

Urban-rural connections in Domesday Book and the late Anglo-Saxon town

Haslam, Jeremy

Urban-rural connections, Vol.7, (2011)

Abstract

The issue concerning the origin of the attachment of urban tenements to rural properties shown in Domesday Book and in earlier sources, which has generated controversy for more than a century, is examined in a new way. The spatial attributes of these connections in sample areas of four shires in Wessex and the west Midlands are examined to develop a historical model which is explanatory of these connections in both temporal and functional terms. It is concluded that these were developed as an integral part of the process of the setting up of burghal and other royal sites by the king, in partnership with the tenants-in-chief of the time, in the mid and late Saxon period.

One of the most tenacious and long-running controversies regarding the origin and development of the late Anglo-Saxon town has been the nature and function of ‘heterogeneous tenure’, one of the defining characteristics of the Domesday borough.

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