William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book in 1085, 19 years after his successful invasion of England. Allowing for some significant exclusions — among them the city of London — this extraordinary survey of the country was completed by the end of the summer of 1086.
Its 413 pages were written in Latin by one scribe and checked by one assistant. Its purpose was to provide William with information about his subjects' assets and the amount of tax the country could sustain.
In the process, of course, the Domesday Book gave a detailed picture of the state of the economy and the society 20 years on from the massive disruption of the conquest.
All over England and in parts of Wales towns and villages awaited the visit of the royal commissioners who would record land ownership, tenantry, livestock, buildings, woodland, natural resources such as animals and fish, farm equipment, and much else. When the commissioners arrived, it was, as people in later years came to see it, a kind of Day of Judgment — hence the name: Doomsday.
Sleepy villages like Alstonefield, on the Staffordshire/Derbyshire border, with its fine village green and population of a few hundred people spread thinly through the district, were of interest to the commissioners who recorded that in the year of their enquiries, 1086, Roger Earl of Shrewsbury held the Manor and its land which they assessed at '3 virgates'. A virgate was a land measurement roughly equal to 30 acres which in turn is about 12 hectares.
But because the survey was not as exhaustive or as wide-ranging as may have been originally planned — William's death in September 1087 was one of several events which sapped the enterprise of some of its original momentum — there were villages which, waiting apprehensively for the commissioners to arrive, were spared such notoriety.
To be overlooked by the Domesday commissioners turned out to be a blessing then but a pity later on. In modern times 'mentioned in the Domesday Book' lends a certain cachet to some otherwise unexceptional villages and towns.
One that was spared a visitation was the Hertfordshire village of Eslingadene. As historian Henry Bateson notes, 'Neither the church nor the manor is mentioned in the Domesday Book.'
As a matter of fact, it seems that, while the years and centuries rolled by, not much at all was especially noteworthy about Eslingadene. It was, as Bateson describes it, 'A placid, picturesque village,