The Domesday folios present a wealth of detail about population, which constitutes one of the standard items of information that appear in entry after entry. Even so, the picture that emerges is only a very imperfect one. There is no record for the area now covered by the four northern counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland and Durham, and the account of what is now the county of Lancaster is meagre in content and unsatisfactory in form. For the rest of England, the information, though abundant, raises many problems. Some of the obscurities or omissions are possibly the result of clerical errors, but there are many that cannot be explained in this way.

THE IMPERFECT STATISTICS

A striking example of the imperfection of the Domesday record is provided by the reference to Avebury in Wiltshire (65b). It was rated at 2 hides and was worth 20s a year, and had a church, but nowhere do we find any mention of those who worshipped in the church or of the land they tilled. In the same way there is no reference to those who may have attended the churches at Kilmersdon in Somerset (198b, 91b), at Whitchurch Canonicorum in Dorset (28, 78b) and at places in other counties.

Quite a number of entries record teams and other resources but no people. Thus there were teams, meadow, underwood and 2 mills at Stainby (Lines., 358), but there is no mention of those who worked in the village.