livestock

Apart from the oxen who pulled the plough teams and the pigs used as measure woodland, livestock is mentioned only infrequently in Great Domesday.

This is not, however, because the information was unavailable. Little Domesday Book and all the major satellite texts record detailed information about the demesne livestock, though not about the undoubtedly greater number of animals belonging to the peasantry. Sheep, wethers, swine, goats, cows, calves, oxen, bulls, horses, rounceys, mares, foals, mules and donkeys are recorded in substantial numbers for the counties of Cambridge in circuit 3 and for Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset in circuit 2.

Despite their deficiencies, these statistics from the satellite texts are adequate enough to reveal that Domesday manors were well endowed with livestock, particularly with sheep, which exceeded the combined total of all other livestock by a very considerable margin in all areas for which the figures can be gleaned.

For further information, see Domesday geography of south-west England, edited by H.C. Darby and R. Welldon Finn (1967); and H.C. Darby, Domesday England (1977).

See also appurtenances.