Fishbourne in the Domesday Book

The village in William the Conqueror's great survey of 1086

Fishbourne appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as two separate entries, reflecting the distinction between the settlements that would later become known as Old Fishbourne and New Fishbourne. The manor was recorded as Fiseborne, held after the Conquest by Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury, one of the most powerful Norman lords in Sussex.

The Domesday entry records agricultural land, a small population, and the usual apparatus of a working manor on the Sussex coastal plain. The fisheries of the harbour would have been an important economic resource, though the survey's recording of such assets is inconsistent. The entry confirms that Fishbourne was an established settlement well before the Norman Conquest, with roots in the Saxon period and earlier.

The two Fishbourne entries in Domesday reflect a pattern common in the Chichester area, where manors were often subdivided among different lords. The distinction between the two settlements persisted through the medieval period and is still visible today in the names Old Fishbourne and New Fishbourne.

The Domesday Book provides a snapshot of Fishbourne at a particular moment, but the village's history stretches back far further. The Roman Palace, built a thousand years before the survey, demonstrates that this stretch of the harbour coast has been settled and valued since antiquity. The Domesday entry is a single data point in a very long story.