Most people are well aware of the Domesday Book and the date 1086. Sellar and Yeatman in their comic satire 1066 And All That depict William the Conqueror compiling the book himself as an inventory of all his subjects’ possessions before ‘indicating to everybody that the Possessions mentioned in it were now his.’ Lloyd George’s early 20th century ‘Domesday’ is less well-known, but it was no less thorough as a record of land holding and the survey is an absolute goldmine for local and family historians.

The modern Domesday had its origins in the Liberal Government of 1906, frustrated by a Conservative Opposition that was able to use its majority in the House of Lords to veto legislation.

The Government was unpopular, despite the promised introduction of old age pensions, and needed to find a new economic policy to pay for social reforms.

The Welsh radical, David Lloyd George (1863-1945) was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in Asquith’s Government in 1908 and came up with the People’s Budget in 1909. He described it as: ‘a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable war against poverty and squalidness.’ Motor vehicle tax and a tax on petrol were included but a political storm blew up around his proposed land duties and a valuation of all land in Britain. Lord Rosebery denounced the Budget as a revolution and the land taxes were attacked as unjust, unfair, unequal and oppressive.

Lloyd George fought back, asking: “Who ordained that a few people should have the land of Britain as a perquisite? Who made ten thousand people owners of the soil, and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?”

He lambasted the House of Lords as ‘500 men, ordinary men chosen accidentally from among the unemployed’ overriding the judgement of millions represented in the Commons.

Despite a Parliamentary tradition that the Lords did not challenge Budgets, the House of Lords rejected the Finance Bill in November 1909, leading to a General Election which the Liberals narrowly won. The People’s Budget finally passed into law in April 1910.

The Inland Revenue quickly recruited a huge staff to compile the valuation which was estimated to cost £500,000 over five years. Local people such as C M Taphouse, owner of a music shop in Magdalen Street, Oxford, and Herbert Winchester, the school teacher at Whitchurch, were enlisted to send forms to each household in their district and fill in the large format or ‘Domesday Books’.

These books included a description of each property, the names and addresses of owners and occupiers, and figures for the extent of the property and its rateable value. Large scale Ordnance Survey sheets, usually at the 25-inch or 1:2500 scale, provided a means of cross reference with the Valuation Books and were specially revised — at Carterton and Bicester, for example — where there had been recent development.

The plans, a kaleidoscope of colour to reflect different land uses, are fascinating in themselves and the Valuation Books are chock full of detail.

You can chart the progress of recent Italian immigrants, Antonio Delnevo and Carlo Marchetti in St. Ebbe’s, Oxford; you can discover that Frank, Rowland and Mark Mouldey were occupiers of the brick kiln at Culham; you can find old street names — Twitchers Alley in Bicester — and splendid house names such as The Gadget, The Shanty or Quaint Cottage in Shiplake.

At the end of the valuation process, the Oxford District Valuer, Laurence Lanham, posted a copy of Form 37 to every local owner, giving the provisional valuation of each property.

These forms, sent out in 1913 or later, sometimes amplify or update earlier information; in Carterton, for example, Mrs Gallacher’s shop is now named The Guide Post Stores and the Carterton Co-op, described as a house in the Valuation Book, is clearly a shop by July 1913.

The land duties never raised large sums but landowners feared they were the thin end of the wedge, leading perhaps to more swingeing taxation or even land nationalization. In 1914, Lloyd George tried to introduce site value rating, using the ongoing valuation exercise but this proposal was never adopted.

After a number of reverses in the courts and following the hiatus of the Great War, most of the land duties were repealed in 1920. The valuation survey continued to have an administrative use until the 1960s and working copies of the Ordnance Survey sheets were sometimes amended.

The Oxford District Valuation Office then transferred its ‘Domesday’ records to Oxfordshire Record Office and the Public Record Office, now The National Archives (TNA), passed on office copies of Form 37s in 1980. You can search catalogues of these records at www.oxfordshire.gov,uk/heritagesearch by entering ‘District Valuation’ and the place-name you want and you can see the original documents at Oxfordshire Record Office; for further information, please ring the office on 01865 398200 or visit www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/oro Please be aware that surviving Valuation Books, plans and Form 37s for the Vale of White Horse are at Berkshire Record Office. For more information about properties from the ‘Domesday’ survey, it is also worth noting that TNA holds Field Books (class IR 58) and the permanent set of record plans for England and Wales.