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, Newport was held by Robert Gernon.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Newport in 1086, they recorded a manor held by Robert Gernon and King William. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, it was held by (Earl) Harold.
The settlement was assessed at 11.88 hides for tax. The record notes 14 plough teams at work (2 in the lord's demesne and 12 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 56 heads of household: 34 villagers, 18 smallholders, 2 freemen and 2 slaves. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (40 acres), woodland (106 pigs) and 2 mills. The manor was valued at 26.1 pounds in 1086, up from 20 pounds in 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 →
Newport 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 Newport'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.
428 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Newport, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Newport is White Chalk Subgroup (Maastrichtian).
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.