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, Laughton was held by Roger of Bully.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Laughton in 1086, they recorded a manor held by Roger of Bully. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, it was held by Earl Edwin.
The settlement was assessed at 54 hides for tax. There was land for 29 ploughs, with 40 plough teams at work (10 in the lord's demesne and 30 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 129 heads of household: 83 villagers, 23 smallholders and 23 freemen. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included woodland (1 league + 2 furlongs * 8 furlongs mixed measures). The manor was valued at 15 pounds in 1086, down from 24 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 →
Laughton 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 Laughton'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.
1,080 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Laughton, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Laughton 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.