The settlement of Birkby Hill is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Skyrack in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Birkby Hill at 9 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Birkby Hill supported a recorded population of 17 villagers, 3 smallholders, working 9 ploughs between them.

The valuation dropped between 1066 and 1086. Before 1066, Birkby Hill was worth 8 shillings; by 1086 that had dropped to 6 shillings – a fall of 25%. Most Yorkshire villages that lost value on this scale were swept up in the Harrying of the North – William’s scorched-earth campaign of 1069–70.

The survey lists 2 manors at Birkby Hill 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 Birkby Hill (1086)

Churches: 1
Meadow: 20 acres

Other Settlements in Skyrack

The Meaning of the Name

The name Birkby Hill is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, a farmstead or village, while the first element appears to represent birch (ON birki). Taken together the name probably meant something close to ’the birch 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 Birkby Hill.

Listed Buildings Near Birkby Hill

Historic England records 14 listed buildings within about a mile of Birkby Hill. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II