A place in Wiltshire 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, Bedwyn was held by King William.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Bedwyn in 1086, they recorded 2 manors held by King William and Brictward the priest. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by King Edward and Brictward the priest's father.
The settlement was assessed at 1.5 hides for tax. There was land for 80 ploughs, with 79 plough teams at work (12 in the lord's demesne and 67 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 98 heads of household: 80 villagers and 18 slaves. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (200 acres), woodland (2 * 1 leagues & 0.5 league * 3 furlongs mixed measures) and 8 mills. The manors were valued at 103 pounds in 1086, up from 100 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 →
Bedwyn was one of the settlements recorded in Wiltshire in the 1086 survey. Wiltshire in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Bedwyn'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.
Nationally registered historic battlefields within 25 miles of Bedwyn.
366 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Bedwyn, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Bedwyn 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.