The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Barnby Hall, entered under the hundred of Staincross in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Barnby Hall at 2 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Barnby Hall supported a recorded population of 10 villagers, 12 smallholders, 4 slaves, working 7 ploughs between them.

The survey records Barnby Hall’s value at 4 shillings in 1086. No pre-Conquest figure survives – not unusual in the North, where records were disrupted by the Harrying and by the patchy coverage of the survey.

Resources Recorded at Barnby Hall (1086)

Cattle: 5
Sheep: 40
Meadow: 4 acres

Other Settlements in Staincross

The Meaning of the Name

The name Barnby Hall is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, a farmstead or village. The first element is most likely a personal name or an early descriptive term, now difficult to recover with certainty. Taken together the name probably meant something close to ‘a farmstead’.

Names of this type are a fingerprint of Scandinavian settlement: they cluster across the old Danelaw, where Norse-speaking settlers renamed or founded villages from the late 9th century onward.

Remarkably, the name has changed little since 1086, when the Domesday scribes wrote it as Barnby Hall.

Listed Buildings Near Barnby Hall

Historic England records 41 listed buildings within about a mile of Barnby Hall. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II