Rediscovering the Tudor Domesday: a new understanding of regional environments & communities unlocked from a unique national survey

The Tudor Domesday opens up a neglected, nationwide survey of property and wealth in sixteenth-century England – Henry VIII’s first step after declaring his supremacy over the Church – to extend our ground-level knowledge and understanding of the development of landscapes, livelihoods and social organisation in every region of the kingdom over the course of their formative centuries. An audit of all sources of income claimed by Church institutions carried out in 1535, this ‘Valor ecclesiasticus’ [VE] was intended to capture for 50 historic counties of England and Wales comprehensive details of the infrastructure and income of 8000 parish churches, 650 monasteries, 22 cathedrals and countless chantries, colleges, hospitals and schools together with the people earning their living with them or from them. It describes agricultural land, woodland and waterways and working buildings from market stalls and mills to open-cast coal mines. It identifies the men, women and children who between them led, laboured for or benefited from these enterprises; and focuses the objects and outcomes of their efforts, recording livestock and crops and calculating yields and prices. Even local environmental conditions and weather patterns are noted in passing. VE was the most ambitious account of the realm to be compiled since Domesday Book. It surpasses it in the impression it provides of the natural and built environment and of the roles, responsibilities and needs of local society. Yet for two hundred years the data have been locked away in a printed transcript, badly-edited, which retains the densely abbreviated entries of the original manuscripts. It failed to address anomalies and omissions in the entries and overlooked related drafts and copies held outside of the Public Records. Consequently, the first generation of modern historians approached the data purely as an appendix to their assessment of the significance of the Tudor Reformation; subsequently scholars have held it at arm’s length. The insights the data offer into the physical, material and social development of diverse environments are still to be tapped. Advances in understanding of the neighbouring regions of Ireland, Scotland and northern Europe, and the re-emergence in the public domain of missing manuscript witnesses, set the continuing neglect of VE data in sharp relief. An interdisciplinary team experienced with comparable national datasets will re-assess the state of the record, explain its process and evaluate its importance as guide to the arc of regional developments up to 1535. They will establish a digital transcript supported by summary analysis graphically presented, enabling self-directed investigation for the widest range of users. In parallel, trial programmes for school teachers and UK archives sector professionals will test the use of the survey data as entry-points for exploring the environmental and social history of regional localities; community history groups will explore how they might encourage and enhance the discovery of heritage sites and landscapes both directly and through Local Studies research; webinars and a workshop will raise awareness of these little-known data on national land ownership, infrastructure and income with policymakers in a range of UK government departments.