A place in Huntingdonshire 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, Huntingdon was held by King William.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Huntingdon in 1086, they recorded 10 manors held by King William, Eustace (the sheriff) and Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by King Edward, Ramsey (St Benedict), abbey of, Burgred (the priest) and Thorkil (the priest).
The settlement was assessed at 50 hides for tax. The recorded population was 100 heads of household: 100 smallholders. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included 1 mill. The manors were valued at 39.83 pounds in 1086, down from 42 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 →
Huntingdon was one of the settlements recorded in Huntingdonshire in the 1086 survey. Huntingdonshire in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Huntingdon'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.
160 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Huntingdon, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Huntingdon is Kellaways Formation And Oxford Clay Formation (Undifferentiated) (Oxfordian).
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.