DD - Episode 52 - Special - York

One year of Domesday Delving! To mark the occasion, we’re tackling one of the great titans of the survey: the City of York.

In 1086 York sprawls across two full pages of Domesday, a record of a city scarred by rebellion, half-emptied by the Harrying of the North, and reshaped by Norman castles. In this special episode, we look at York before the Conquest, dig into Domesday’s tangle of messuages, priests, usurpers and French settlers, and explore what happens when two legal systems — Anglo-Saxon and Norman — collide. Along the way we follow rabbit holes into William’s double-castle strategy, the devastation of the Harrying, and the shifting laws that made whole villages pay for a Norman’s death.