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Domesday Book Goes Online

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-doomsday-that's-in-a-ghostbusters-episode dept.

Accommodate Students writes "The Domesday Book has gone online. As one of the earliest public records goes online, anyone with an internet connection will be able to access this important document. Amongst other interesting facts, the BBC is reporting that the Book can still be used today in court for property disputes. In an interesting development, the National Archives are making online searches free, but downloads of data will cost £3.50 (approx $6.50 US). Similar launches of historical websites in the past have struggled to keep up with server loads in their first days and weeks, so it remains to be seen whether the Domesday Book online will be more or less fragile than the parchment originals."

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Pages come with a translation by Bushcat · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've used this service a few times already. Each image of the original page is supplied with a translation so one can make sense of it.

  2. Re:Dr. Strangelove by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    You weren't too far off.

    From the wikipedia article:

    "When the book took the name "Domesday" (Middle English spelling of Doomsday) in the 12th century, it was to emphasize its definitiveness and authority (the analogy refers to the Christian notion of a Last Judgment)."


  3. Re:property by niktemadur · · Score: 4, Informative

    Please mod this guy up, he's got one helluva point.

    At least a quarter of the population was directly killed by the Plague within a six year span. As noted, this was bound to jumble and reassemble the social structure in a major way, a process that probably lasted for decades.

    However, a bit of speculation: Many land-owning families must have been wiped clean off the face of the Earth, many others would probably have migrated elsewhere, London perhaps, in an attempt to find better fortunes. It's entirely possible that the canniest survivors took advantage of the chaos, changing their names overnight, becoming 'cousins' to the less fortunate families, claiming title to their lands. In this manner, the names would remain the same, albeit under false pretenses. So maybe the property structure was kept more intact than we might suppose at face value.

    --
    Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
  4. Re:Old tech vs new by Alioth · · Score: 4, Informative

    The 1980s Domesday Project is available online - it's still perfectly readable.
    The biggest problem with getting the Domesday Project online was *not* reading the data - it was COPYRIGHTS (and finding all the copyright holders down to get permission).

    You can use the 1986 Domesday project here: http://www.domesday1986.com/

    --
    Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows