Domesday Book records the Solent manors

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William the Conqueror's great survey of 1086, the Domesday Book, provides the first comprehensive written record of the settlements, manors, and resources of the Solent region. The survey recorded the landholdings, populations, ploughlands, mills, fisheries, and values of every manor in Hampshire and Sussex, creating a snapshot of the area twenty years after the Norman Conquest. The Solent entries reveal a well-settled landscape. Fareham, Titchfield, Portchester, Alverstoke (later Gosport), and dozens of smaller manors are all recorded. Portsmouth itself barely existed at this date, but the harbour and its surrounding settlements were already of strategic and economic importance. The survey records extensive salt workings along the coast, fisheries in the harbour, and productive agricultural land on the coastal plain. The Domesday Book also records the great lordships that dominated the region. The Bishop of Winchester held Fareham and Titchfield, while the king retained Portchester and its castle. These tenurial arrangements shaped the political and economic geography of the Solent for centuries to come.