A place in Devon 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, St James Church was held by Aelfeva.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed St James Church in 1086, they recorded a manor held by Aelfeva. The same lord had held the land before the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The settlement was assessed at 0.37 hides for tax. There was land for 1 plough. The recorded population was 3 heads of household: 2 cottagers and 1 slave. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. The manor was valued at 3 shillings in 1086.
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 →
St James Church was one of the settlements recorded in Devon in the 1086 survey. Devon in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of St James Church'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.
872 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of St James Church, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath St James Church is Permian Rocks (Undifferentiated) (Permian).
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.