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, Thornton was held by Wulfric.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Thornton in 1086, they recorded 2 manors held by Wulfric, Odo and Ralph of Mortimer, under Erneis of Buron. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by Grim.
The settlement was assessed at 10.25 hides for tax. There was land for 20.5 ploughs, with 14.2 plough teams at work (5.4 in the lord's demesne and 8.9 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 94 heads of household: 15 villagers, 7 smallholders and 72 freemen. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included 0.5 mills. The manors were valued at 17.65 pounds in 1086, up from 10.8 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 →
Thornton 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 Thornton'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 Thornton 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.