1986 Domesday Project

1986 Church Minshull

In 1986, 900 years after William the Conqueror's original Domesday Book, the BBC published the Domesday Project. The project was probably the most ambitious attempt ever to capture the essence of life in the United Kingdom. Over a million people contributed to this snapshot of the country.

People were asked to record what they thought would be of interest in another 1000 years.

The whole of the UK was divided into 23,000 4x3km areas called Domesday Squares or "D-Blocks". Church Minshull was d-block 364000-360000.

Schools and community groups surveyed over 108,000 square km of the UK and submitted more than 147,819 pages of text articles and 23,225 amateur photos, cataloguing what it was like to live, work and play in their community.

The project was about documenting everyday life – the ordinary, rather than the extraordinary and residents of Church Minshull in 1986, responded with their written accounts...

In 2011 the BBC website published the content and has the series of Church Minshull digital snapshots of life in 1986. The ARENA team has also created a document of the full content of the website as one article and a pdf link to this document can be found on this page.