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Hello, 20 years after the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror sent hundreds of officials

out into the English and Welsh countryside.

Their job was to make a survey of the land and who owned it,

and how many people and animals lived there, in some cases, right down to the last pig.

This enormous task was finished in seven months,

and the result was one of the most remarkable documents ever produced, the Doomsday Book.

Compiled in 1086, the Doomsday Book was still being consulted and used in legal disputes many centuries later.

It's the oldest and arguably the most important of all our public records,

and the original copy still exists in the National Archives.

But why was the Doomsday Book compiled, and why is it such a significant document?

With me to discuss the Doomsday Book are Stephen Baxter,

Reader in Medieval History at King's College London, Elizabeth Van Haust,

Honoury Professor of Medieval Europe in History at the University of Cambridge,

and David Bates, Professorial Fellow in Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.

Stephen Baxter, we're talking about an event that took place in the 1080s, 20 years after the Norman Immigration.

Would you give us a quick sketch of where we were at that time in the 1080s?

Sure. Well, the conquests had happened 20 years ago, as you had said,

and in the intervening time, a variety of things had had happened,

all of which were relevant to understanding Doomsday Book.

...