Domesday book says:
Warwickshire in 1066 consisted of two quite dissimilar sections; Arden ( in the north & west ) with isolated farms & hamlets & settlers still moving into the forest, Feldon ( in the south & east ) with compact villages supported by extensive cultivation or open lands from which dense oak woods had been cleared.
The holdings of Thorkell of Warwick and Robert de Beaumont, Count of Meulan, comprised three-quarters of the non-ecclesiastical property. Thorkell son of Alwin, Sheriff under Edward the Confessor, was one of the only two English men in the county to still be holding a baronial estate from the king after the Conquest. His descendants perpetuate the name of Arden today. Robert de Beaumont, having distinguished himself at the battle of Senlac, was rewarded on Williams’s march into the midlands in 1068 with vast Estates. He later became Earl of Leicester and by a ruse, acquired land in Leicestershire as well.
He survived every shift of Power, and died in 1118, one of the last of the Conquest generation. His brother Henry was invested with all the Thorkell lands when he became Earl of Warwick, a title which descended by marriage first to the Beauchamps and then to the Nevilles.