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, Roos was held by Drogo of la Beuvrière.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Roos in 1086, they recorded 2 manors held by Drogo of la Beuvrière and Fulco. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by (Earl) Morcar, Murdoch of Hilston and Swartgeirr.
The settlement was assessed at 46.12 hides for tax. There was land for 48 ploughs, with 18.5 plough teams at work (4.5 in the lord's demesne and 14 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 55 heads of household: 46 villagers, 3 smallholders and 6 freemen. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (12 acres). The manors were valued at 11 pounds in 1086, down from 59 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 →
Roos 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 Roos'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.
76 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Roos, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Roos 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.