A place in Lincolnshire 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, Bodebi was held by Odo.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Bodebi in 1086, they recorded a manor held by Odo and Ralph of Mortimer.
The settlement was assessed at 10 hides for tax. There was land for 20 ploughs, with 13.5 plough teams at work (5 in the lord's demesne and 8.5 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 86 heads of household: 8 villagers, 7 smallholders and 71 freemen. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included 0.5 mills. The manor was valued at 17.25 pounds in 1086, up from 10 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 →
Bodebi was one of the settlements recorded in Lincolnshire in the 1086 survey. Lincolnshire in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Bodebi'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.
The bedrock beneath Bodebi 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.