Compton Chamberlayne Field Book, 1597

In 1597, shortly after Sir Edward Penruddocke completed his purchase of the manor of Compton Chamberlayne, he commissioned this survey of the entire parish. Detailing the occupation and use of every single parcel of land and every building, it provides us with an extraordinary snapshot of life in the village at the end of Elizabeth's reign. Besides the dimensions and crops contained in the parish's fields, it reveals tensions and frictions between neighbours, and the beginnings of the assult on the parishioners' customary rights by the family that would dominate the village for the next 300 years.