A place in Cambridgeshire with a history you can trace through the records: its entry in the 1086 Domesday Book, the archaeological finds and scheduled monuments around it, and the nearest Roman sites and battlefields. Everything below is drawn from the historical record.
In 1086, Cambridge was held by King William.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Cambridge in 1086, they recorded 5 manors held by King William and Count Alan (of Brittany).
The settlement was assessed at 100 hides for tax. Its recorded resources included 4 mills. The manors were valued at 14.09 pounds in 1086, unchanged since 1066.
The Domesday Book was the great survey of England ordered by William the Conqueror in 1085 and completed in 1086, the oldest surviving public record in the country. How the survey worked →
Cambridge was one of the settlements recorded in Cambridgeshire in the 1086 survey. Cambridgeshire in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Cambridge's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
241 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Cambridge, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Cambridge is Gault Formation And Upper Greensand Formation (Undifferentiated) (Cenomanian).
Aubrey's full report for this location includes every Domesday manor, the complete record of medieval lordship, archaeological context, and the story of how this settlement evolved from 1086 to the present day.