When the Gesta Herwardi framed him as 'Hereward of Bourne', the monks were giving him a convenient home, but the taxman knew better.
Domesday Book – the most extraordinary land survey in medieval Europe – tells a different story. It implies Hereward was not a great castle-lord at Bourne, and that was all a 19th century Kingsleyian construct. His landholdings indicate he was a middle-ranking thegn who held scattered manors on the limestone ridge and fen-edge of south Kesteven, nearly all leased from the two great abbeys of Peterborough and Crowland. Though there appears to be much more to it than that.

 

What is Domesday Book? In 1086, twenty years after the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror ordered a gigantic national audit – the greatest land-survey ever attempted in Europe until modern times. Commissioners rode circuit asking three brutal questions:

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• Who held this land in King Edward’s day (1066)?

• Who holds it now (1086)?

• How much is it worth?​

 

The answers were written up in two huge volumes known as Great and Little Domesday. Nothing escaped: plough-teams, villagers, woodland, meadow, mills, even beehives. William wanted to know exactly what he had conquered and who owed him what.​