The Domesday Geography of South-West England

The Domesday Book has long been used as a source of information about legal and economic matters, but its bearing upon the geography of medieval England has been comparatively neglected. The extraction of geographical information involves problems of interpretation, since it necessitates an analysis into elements and their subsequent reconstruction on a geographical basis. But this process makes available otherwise unobtainable evidence for forming a general picture of the relative prosperity of different areas, as well as data for the comparative study of varying geographic and economic factors. This volume contains chapters on Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devonshire, Cornwall and a concluding chapter on the south-western counties.