A place in Kent 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, Hemsted was held by Ranulf of Vaubadon.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Hemsted in 1086, they recorded a manor held by Ranulf of Vaubadon, who held from Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, it was held by free men, two.
The settlement was assessed at 0.12 hides for tax. The recorded population was 1 head of household: 1 villager. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. The manor was valued at 10 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 →
Hemsted was one of the settlements recorded in Kent in the 1086 survey. Kent in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Hemsted'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.
273 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Hemsted, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Hemsted 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.