A place in Suffolk 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, Bentley was held by King William.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Bentley in 1086, they recorded 3 manors held by King William, Fulcric and Aelfric the priest, under Count Alan (of Brittany). Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by Earl Gyrth, Edmund and Thorsten.
The settlement was assessed at 2.66 hides for tax. The record notes 2 plough teams at work (1 in the lord's demesne and 1 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 18 heads of household: 13 villagers and 5 smallholders. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (8 acres) and woodland (12 pigs). The manors were valued at 16 shillings in 1086, up from 5 shillings 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 →
Bentley was one of the settlements recorded in Suffolk in the 1086 survey. Suffolk in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Bentley'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.
18 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Bentley, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Bentley is Neogene To Quaternary Rocks (Undifferentiated) (Quaternary).
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.