The settlement of Belthorpe is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Pocklington in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Belthorpe at 3.5 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Belthorpe supported a recorded population of 2 villagers, 8 smallholders, 1 slave, 19 freemanmen, working 8 ploughs between them.

The survey records Belthorpe’s value at 3.61 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.

The survey lists 2 manors at Belthorpe under different lords. Splitting a single settlement between multiple tenants was common across the North – Saxon estates broken up and handed to William’s followers after 1066.

Resources Recorded at Belthorpe (1086)

Sheep: 170
Horses (cobs): 1
Salthouses: 0
Meadow: 1 acres

Other Settlements in Pocklington

The Meaning of the Name

The name Belthorpe is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word þorp, an outlying or secondary farmstead. 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 outlying farm’.

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 Belthorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Belthorpe

Historic England records 6 listed buildings within about a mile of Belthorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II