Stubbington Recorded in the Domesday Book

1086

Stubbington appears in the Domesday survey of 1086 as 'Stubintone', a small agricultural settlement held by Hugh de Port as part of his extensive Hampshire holdings. The entry records land sufficient for several ploughs, meadow, and woodland, indicating a working rural community engaged in arable farming and animal husbandry on the coastal plain between the Meon estuary and the Gosport peninsula. The settlement was modest in scale, typical of the dozens of small Hampshire manors recorded in the survey. Its position on relatively flat, fertile land close to the coast gave it advantages for both farming and access to coastal resources. The Domesday record confirms that Stubbington was already an established, named settlement by the late eleventh century, predating most of the surrounding communities that would later grow to eclipse it in size. The name itself is thought to derive from Old English, possibly meaning 'the farmstead of Stubb's people' or a similar personal name compound, reflecting the Anglo-Saxon origins of the settlement.

Context

The Domesday Book was compiled on the orders of William the Conqueror in 1086 to assess the taxable wealth of his newly conquered kingdom. Hampshire was extensively surveyed, with hundreds of manors and settlements recorded. The survey provides the earliest written evidence for many Hampshire villages.

Impact

The Domesday entry establishes Stubbington's antiquity as a named settlement and confirms its agricultural character, which would persist for the next eight centuries.