In 1986 the BBC launched an ambitious project to record a snapshot of everyday life across the UK for future generations. A million volunteers took part…

Now, 25 years later you can explore the archive online, see the pictures, update the information and make your mark on this fascinating record of our collective history. Visit the Pevensey Bay archive, complete with pictures and first hand accounts here.

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 digital 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 – including the Channel Islands and Isle of Man – was divided into 23,000 4x3km areas called Domesday Squares or “D-Blocks”.

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.

This was about documenting everyday life – the ordinary rather than the extraordinary.

The project used the cutting edge technology of the day, and the data was eventually presented on a special type of Laser-Disc, read by a BBC master computer and navigated using an innovative tracker-ball pointing system.

But the technology didn’t catch on and the computers became very expensive for schools and libraries to buy. Very few people ever got to see the fruits of all of their hard work.

As time went on there were fears that the discs would become unreadable, as computers capable of reading the format had become rare and drives capable of accessing the discs even rarer.

Now 25 years later in our age of the world wide web, digital photography, email and social networking, its time to have a look at those entries again, to bring the project up to date, and perhaps to lay down another layer of local history.

Here you can rediscover and explore images and articles from the original project to find out how life in Britain has changed… and how some things have stayed the same. In addition, you will be able to update the project by re-photographing the images today and updating text entries.

With the help of The National Archives this unique record will be preserved for future generations.
Acknowledgements

The Domesday project has been much loved over the years and behind the scenes enthusiasts, both amateur and professional, have been attempting to rescue the Domesday data.

In 1999 a group of academics in the US and the UK came together and formed the “CAMiLEON” consortium. They wanted to demonstrate that the principle of “emulation” of obsolete operating systems could be applied to multimedia. In 2002-3 the consortium successfully emulated the Domesday software and data on a modern computer.

In a private venture in 2001, Adrian Pearce set out to ‘reverse engineer’ the original Domesday data and make it available to any Windows PC – instead of emulating it. In 2004 he succeeded and published the data online, the first instance of a Domesday website. However, on January 27th 2008, Adrian Pearce sadly died and the website was taken off line.

In early 2003 Andy Finney a producer on the original project and now working on behalf of the UK National Archives, arranged for high quality digital copies of the Domesday videodisc master tapes to be made. This also provided the photographs and maps used on the Domesday Reloaded website.

And quietly beavering away at the BBC was George Auckland and his Innovations Team, who have now completed a full extraction of the community disc. This is the material which has been published online as the centrepiece of the BBC “Domesday Reloaded” website.

^{SOURCE : BBC DOMESDAY RELOADED BLOG}