Adolphus Ballard (22 February 1867 – 1915) was an English historian and solicitor. The eldest son of Adolphus Ballard and Frances Ann née Stafford he was born in Chichester, Sussex, educated in Hastings, Sussex and articled as a solicitor in

Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire Chipping Norton is a market town and civil parish in the Cotswold Hills in the West Oxfordshire district of Oxfordshire, England, about south-west of Banbury and north-west of Oxford. The 2011 Census recorded the civil parish population as 5 ...

before moving to take up the position of Town Clerk for

Woodstock, Oxfordshire Woodstock is a market town and civil parish, north-west of Oxford in West Oxfordshire in the county of Oxfordshire, England. The 2011 Census recorded a parish population of 3,100. Blenheim Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is next to W ...

. He married Mary Elizabeth née Henman in 1894 and they had three sons and two daughters. He studied the English

medieval period In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, writing several treatises on the ''

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

''. Author of ''The Domesday Boroughs'' and ''The Domesday Inquest'', coauthor of a book on the

Black Plague The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

. For the last part of his life, Ballard lived in a 17th-century house at number 28, High Street, Woodstock.

External links

* 1867 births 1915 deaths 19th-century English historians 20th-century English historians {{England-historian-stub