The survey, known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus, set out to discover the financial state of the Church of which the Tudor king had just made himself head in his Break with Rome.
Valor Ecclesiasticus counted 8,000 parish churches, 650 monasteries, 22 cathedrals and numerous chapels, chantries, colleges, schools, hospitals and poor houses. It took note of their buildings and grounds, their farmland and the commercial, industrial and residential property in which they were invested. And it recorded the names of many of the men and women who lived and worked with these great enterprises and even gave attention to the large number of children, elderly and sick who depended on them for their welfare.
The 1535 survey covered 50 counties and captured their landscapes in remarkable detail, describing meadows and orchards, moorland and woods, waterways and a wide variety of working environments from market stalls to open-cast coal mines.
Rediscovering the Tudor Domesday will present the complete, nationwide survey on a free-to-access website. Users will be able to explore every locality in England and Wales as they were in Tudor times.
Funded by a grant of almost £1.5m from UK Research & Innovation’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, the three-year project will also engage schools, heritage organisations, regional archives and community groups across the UK from Cumbria to the South Coast.
Resources
The Valor Ecclesiasticus is an incredible resource for local history yet has been inaccessible to all but the most experienced of researchers for years…
Blogs
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A digital team led by Exeter’s Dr Charlotte Tupman, of the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology, will transform the 500-year old Latin manuscripts into modern, searchable records, translated, analysed and in each case linked to current maps using GiS (Geographic Information System) technology so that every location in the survey can be visualized.…
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Project Lead Professor James Clark, of the Department of Archaeology and History, says: “Valor Ecclesiasticus is second only to Domesday Book as a three-dimensional snapshot of the realm, even surpassing it in the impression it gives of England’s landscape and the lives and occupations of local society. It reveals the men, women, and children who led,…
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The National Archives will lead programmes for schools and regional archives to develop the use of the survey’s data in teaching and researching Tudor local history. National Trust, the British Association for Local History and a range of community groups in counties across England will work with the project team in using the survey to…