A place in Norfolk 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, Litcham was held by King William.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Litcham in 1086, they recorded 3 manors held by King William, Hermer of Ferrers and William. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by Archbishop Stigand and Thorkil.
The settlement was assessed at 24.87 hides for tax. The record notes 44 plough teams at work (12.5 in the lord's demesne and 31.5 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 176 heads of household: 46 villagers, 93 smallholders, 31 freemen and 6 slaves. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (129 acres), woodland (1080 pigs) and 2 mills. The manors were valued at 62.5 pounds in 1086, up from 32 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 →
Litcham was one of the settlements recorded in Norfolk in the 1086 survey. Norfolk in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Litcham'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.
595 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Litcham, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Litcham 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.