What Is: a Pipe Roll

Officials in Medieval England were meticulous record keepers, particularly when it came to land a financial records such as who owned what rights to which piece of land, and how much was owed in yearly taxes or goods and feudal services.  These records became known as the Pipe Rolls, Great Rolls or Great Rolls of the Pipe.  Unlike the Patent Rolls, which kept track of land ownership and grants of nobility and privileges, the Pipe rolls were financial, keeping track of taxes, fees, dues, fines and other monetary obligations in regard to land.  Each year, the sheriffs of the various counties had to present a yearly tax audit to the Exchequer.  These records were attached together, rolled into a continuous tight scroll similar to a pipe, and labeled as to county or districts covered. 

The paper used for the Pipe Rolls was parchment.  There's no evidence for the idea that they were called Pipe Rolls because of the money piped into the treasury or because they resembled a wine cask.  They look more like a scroll but were wound tightly to preserve them, like a pipe.  They were not intended as a complete record of all sources of royal revenue, nor as a running account system, but as a tax audit for each county.  The earliest Pipe Rolls were contemporaneous with the Domesday Book of Norman Times, the Book being an inventory of land.  The earliest surviving roll dates from the reign of Henry I in 1130.  The last Pipe Rolls were created in 1834, when other more modern accounting methods were put in place and the Pipe Office, which was responsible for keeping them, was abolished.  They are kept today in the National Archives in London.