The Domesday Book has long been regarded as a unique source of information about legal and economic matters, but its bearing upon the reconstruction of the geography of England during the early Middle Ages has remained comparatively neglected. The extraction of this geographical information is not always as simple as it might appear to be from a casual inspection of the Domesday folios. Not only are there general problems of interpretation, but almost every county has its own peculiarities. There is, moreover, the sheer difficulty of handling the vast mass of material, and of getting a general view of the whole. The original survey was made in terms of manors, villages and hundreds, but the Norman clerks reassembled the information under the headings of the different landholders of each county. Their work must therefore be undone, and the survey set out once more upon a geographical basis.

The information that such an analysis makes available is of two kinds. In the first place, the details about plough-teams and about population enable a general picture of the relative prosperity of different areas to be obtained. In the second place, the details about such things as meadow, pasture, wood and salt-pans serve to illustrate further the local variations both in the face of the countryside and in its economic life. An attempt has been made to set out this variety of information as objectively as possible in the form of maps and tables.