A place in Surrey 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, Mideham was held by Saeman.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Mideham in 1086, they recorded 2 manors held by Saeman and Godwin, under Richard son of (Count) Gilbert. The same lords had held the land before the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The settlement was assessed at 1.25 hides for tax. The record notes 1 plough team at work. The recorded population was 3 heads of household: 3 smallholders. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (0.5 acres). The manors were valued at 1.12 pounds in 1086, up from 1 pound 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 →
Mideham was one of the settlements recorded in Surrey in the 1086 survey. Surrey in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Mideham'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.
2,113 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Mideham, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Mideham 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.