The Late Anglo-Saxon Period, 800–1100
This chapter, covering the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman Conquest period, outlines the major changes in land use which accompanied the creation of small local manors and the establishment of collaborative open-field farming. Those changes reflected the shift in relations from ones predominantly organized around social networks to ones of property ownership. Domesday Book supplies a crucial piece of evidence, in light of which fragmentary earlier evidence for the structure of the royal estate of Benson can be better understood. The strong implications of the period’s developments for inhabitants’ perceptions are examined, including through the boundary clauses accompanying royal land charters and the evidence for more structured settlements and systems of administration, including the hundred and its moot.