Anyone who works upon the Domesday Book very soon has two views about it. On the one hand, he can have nothing but admiration for what is probably the most remarkable statistical document in the history of Europe. The continent has no document to compare with this detailed description covering so great a stretch of territory. And the geographer, as he turns over the folios, with their details of population and plough teams, of woodland, meadow and the like, cannot but be excited at the vast amount of information that passes before his eyes. There are other valuable documents that provide evidence of past geographical conditions in many areas; but, more often than not, they are fragmentary and incomplete. If they are detailed, they usually cover only a small area. If they cover a larger area, they are far from detailed. But the Inquest of 1086 was carried out with a fairly high degree of uniformity over almost the whole of England, and the results give us today a unique opportunity of reconstructing some of the main features of the landscape of the eleventh century.

But there is another point of view. When this great wealth of data is examined more closely, perplexities and difficulties arise. The Domesday Book is far from being a straightforward document. It bristles with difficulties. Many of them have been resolved as the result of the activity of a long line of editors and commentators, working, more particularly, since the middle of the nineteenth century.