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, Sutton was held by free man, one.
When William the Conqueror's commissioners surveyed Sutton in 1086, they recorded 3 manors held by free man, one, Drogo of la Beuvrière and Lambert of Gonerby, under York (St Peter), archbishop of. Before the Conquest, in the time of King Edward, the land was held by Beverley (St John), canons of, Earl Tosti and Grimkel.
The settlement was assessed at 32.74 hides for tax. There was land for 26 ploughs, with 18.5 plough teams at work (10 in the lord's demesne and 8.5 held by the villagers). The recorded population was 69 heads of household: 49 villagers, 14 smallholders and 6 freemen. These are heads of household, so the settlement's true population was several times larger. Its recorded resources included meadow (30 acres) and woodland (4 * 4 furlongs). The manors were valued at 12 pounds in 1086, down from 58 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 →
Sutton 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 Sutton'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.
214 recorded finds have been logged within about 5 miles of Sutton, reported by members of the public and entered in the national record of archaeological finds. They span these periods:
The bedrock beneath Sutton 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.