Following his success in the Battle of Hastings, William The Conquerer commissioned a survey to learn more about the country he now ruled - it was called The Domesday Book.

The survey was designed to provide a record of landowners, tenants, livestock and so forth, and so would not have been too dissimilar to the census that we know today.

The book was actually broken down into two parts. The first, known as Little Domesday, covered Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. The second, known as Great Domesday, covered the rest of England. Curiously, London and Winchester managed to avoid the survey - perhaps because of their daunting size for the surveyors.

This stamp below is from the 900th Anniversary of The Domesday Book issue from June 1986.

Illustration

17p stamp from Domesday Book issue