Bermuda's 'Domesday Book': Richard Norwood's surveys and the development of the Somers Islands, 1616–63

Abstract

Richard Norwood's two early surveys of Bermuda (1617 and 1663) provide highly detailed evidence of early architecture and settlement patterns in Great Britain's oldest remaining colony. This article analyses shifts in land ownership, residence locations and house forms that occurred during Bermuda's first half-century of colonization. It is argued that Norwood's maps have the potential to reveal the locations of more than 400 early archaeological sites that can tell us much about Bermuda's now lost 17th-century domestic timber-frame architecture.