A place in Yorkshire 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, Hellaby was held by Roger of Bully.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Hellaby in 1086, they recorded 2 manors held by Roger of Bully. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by Alsi (son of Karski) and Saeward.
The settlement was assessed at 12 hides for tax. There was land for 14 ploughs, with 56.5 plough teams at work (12 in the lord's demesne and 44.5 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 97 heads of household: 67 villagers and 30 smallholders. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (2 acres), woodland (3 * 1 furlongs) and 6 mills. The manors were valued at 20 pounds in 1086, unchanged since 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 →
Hellaby was one of the settlements recorded in Yorkshire in the 1086 survey. Yorkshire in the Domesday survey →
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Hellaby'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.
1,236 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Hellaby, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Hellaby is Pennine Upper Coal Measures Formation (Westphalian).
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.