The inquiry and its questions
William ordered the inquiry at Christmas 1085, and royal commissioners conducted sworn investigations the following year. Questions covered estates, holders, plough teams, mills, woodland, meadow and value, as well as categories of inhabitants. Local testimony was recorded and condensed into Latin.
The inquiry compared conditions at the end of Edward the Confessor’s reign, when William granted the land, and in 1086. This made changes in possession and value visible. Its focus was property and associated rights; named individuals are principally landholders, rather than a complete list of inhabitants.
Volumes and coverage
Great Domesday contains abbreviated records for most counties. Little Domesday covers Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk in greater detail. Both arrange material by county and then by landholder. A modern place can correspond to several medieval manors and thus appear in multiple entries.
Coverage excludes London city, Winchester, Durham, Northumberland and much of northwestern England, while including only some Welsh border areas. Survey and compilation were separate processes: the National Archives dates the volumes to 1086–1089. Regional coverage, abbreviation and scribal organization therefore shape their evidence.
Reading an entry
The Patcham entry in Sussex records villagers, smallholders, slaves, shepherds, land resources and urban income. Its total value moves from £100 before the Conquest to £50 afterwards and £80 at the survey. Such sequences reveal change more clearly than an isolated total.
Not every entry answers every question, and valuations belong within contemporary fiscal and property arrangements. Later administrators preserved the books as evidence of rights, with an abridgement produced in the thirteenth century. County, folio and recto or verso references allow readers to return to the same passage in facsimiles and translations.