Abstract

The structure and exploitation of the Do111esday Book estate of the Church of Worcester john D. Hamshere its complex patterns. Indeed in most studies of INTRODUCTION Domesday Book estate structures and their management, it has not been deemed possible to Since Galbraith's (1961) pioneering studies into the identify the geographical framework of the estate construction of Domesday Book, scholarly opinion with any precision. Thus in studies of large has come to accept that the statistics of Domesday ecclesiastical estates (DuBoulay 1966; Miller 1951) Book are more likely to refer to areas of land than to per se. That these areal units were of variable recognition is made of the division of lands between villages bishop or abbot, monastery and subtenants, and it is size has long been recognised, although the basic unit to which the data could be applied has accepted that these probably varied in size. When remained more obscure. Recendy, a good case for mapped, however, all component elements are the use of the township has been advanced (Roberts shown as single dots without any attempt to 1984, pp. 244-5) in areas as widespread as the West distinguish between what might have been Riding of Yorkshire (Faull