Wales

Latin, Wales.

Welsh districts under Norman control are described in separate sections of the Domesday accounts of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire. In addition, temporary Norman control of the kingdom of Gwynedd (North Wales) was recorded in the Domesday account of Cheshire. Norman expansion into Gwent was indicated by their construction of castles at Caerleon, Chepstow and Monmouth.

The Welsh border was the only area in Domesday England where waste is recorded for 1066. The amount of recorded waste along the border was extensive at all three dates for which information is given and is normally associated with low, or null values, and the absence of population or other resources. Occasionally (HEF 1,49), this waste is explicitly associated with military activity, which is the most likely cause elsewhere along the border, though some historians doubt this.

Though waste and low values were still common in 1086, the trend was clearly towards recovery, no doubt aided by the proliferation of castles in the Welsh March.

There is a useful brief account of the Welsh March in H.C. Darby, Domesday England (1977); for more extended treatments, see J.E. Lloyd, A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest (third edition, 1939); R.R. Davies, The age of conquest: Wales, 1063-1415 (1987), and K.L. Maund, Ireland, Wales and England in the eleventh century (1991). The printed Phillimore edition for Herefordshire has two valuable notes on the Welsh border (Introductory notes 1-2). For the debate on war and waste, see R. Welldon Finn, The Norman Conquest and its effects on the economy, 1066-1086 (1971); D.M. Palliser, 'Domesday Book and the harrying of the north', Northern History, vol. 29 (1993), pages 1-23; and John J.N. Palmer, 'War and Domesday waste', in Armies, chivalry and warfare in medieval Britain and France, edited by Matthew Strickland (1998), pages 256-78.

See also Archenfield, commote, and structure of Domesday Book.