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, Reigate was held by King William.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Reigate in 1086, they recorded a manor held by King William. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, it was held by Queen Edith.
The settlement was assessed at 37.5 hides for tax. The record notes 29 plough teams at work (3 in the lord's demesne and 26 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 78 heads of household: 67 villagers and 11 smallholders. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (12 acres), woodland (140 swine render) and 2 mills. The manor was valued at 40 pounds in 1086.
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 →
Reigate 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 Reigate'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.
2,016 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Reigate, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Reigate is Lower Greensand Group (Albian).
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.