The Domesday folios relating to Norfolk are of especial interest for two reasons. In the first place, the county of Norfolk, like the counties of Suffolk and Essex, is described in the so-called Little Domesday Book which is more detailed than the main survey. The Little Domesday Book gives, for example, details about the stock on the demesne, or home farm, of the lord of the manor. It also gives details about population and other matters for 1066 as well as for 1086; figures for an intermediate date are also frequently given. It is, in fact, much less of a summary than the main Domesday Book, and for this reason its information cannot fail to be of peculiar interest.

But this more detailed information is not without its drawbacks. The entries of the Little Domesday Book are more cumbrous and untidy than those of the main Domesday Book. They give the impression of being more hastily compiled. The comparatively neat and precise entries of the main survey do not tell us as much, but in some ways they are often less ambiguous, or at any rate they appear to be. J. H. Round suggested that the Little Domesday Book was the first volume to be compiled and that when the compilers saw how bulky their digest was becoming, they decided to summarise the information for the other counties in a simpler manner.