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, Finningham was held by Hubert (of Mont-Canisy).
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Finningham in 1086, they recorded 6 manors held by Hubert (of Mont-Canisy), Robert Malet's mother, Robert Malet, (Bury) St Edmunds, abbey of and Robert Blunt. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by free man, one, free man, one half, Almer, Almer's wife, Brictmer (son of Queneva), Leofwin, free men, eighteen, free men, eleven, man, one and Aki (the Dane).
The settlement was assessed at 2.46 hides for tax. The record notes 5 plough teams at work. The recorded population was 4 heads of household: 4 smallholders. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (5 acres) and woodland (16 pigs). The manors were valued at 3.3699999999999997 pounds in 1086, up from 2.1 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 →
Finningham 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 Finningham'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.
7 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Finningham, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Finningham 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.