Domesday Rebound

Domesday's facelift for its 900th birthday reflects modern scholarship's changing taste as well as the new priorities of conservation.

The history of the rebinding of the two volumes of the Domesday book, from at least the twelfth century to the twentieth, concerns the care for a document which was highly regarded: firstly as an Exchequer document – though its significance was a great deal wider than that; secondly as a legal document of the utmost importance; and finally as the product of one of the finest administrative achievements of the Normans in England. The method by which the text has been treated to some extent reflects whichever of these concepts was uppermost in the minds of those who made decisions concerning its preservation.

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