The whole of the Domesday Book, a massive work containing information about the social and economic conditions in England in the year 1086, has gone online.
Translated from the original Latin, the whole of the work is available to view for free and has been compiled by Professor John Palmer from the University of Hull.
The Domesday Book was compiled on the orders of William the Conqueror and contains the names of landowners and their tenants, records of properties and numbers of oxen and other livestock.
Professor Palmer has worked for 25 years on the Domesday Book, and the online version has been made available with the aim of making the Domesday Book "more accessible and more intelligible by presenting its contents in a variety of forms."
The online version contains a translation, databases of names, places and statistics, and a detailed commentary on matters of interest or obscurity in the text.
Though other versions of the Domesday Book have been made publicly available, they have been restricted to those willing to pay.
www.domesdaybook.net www.esds.ac.uk/findingdata/snDescription.asp?sn=5694&key=5694