Bolton upon Dearne in the Domesday Book (1086)
The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Bolton upon Dearne, entered under the hundred of Strafforth in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Bolton upon Dearne at 124 carucates of taxable land.
At the time of the survey, Bolton upon Dearne supported a recorded population of 262 villagers, 147 smallholders, 136 slaves, working 197 ploughs between them.
The survey records Bolton upon Dearne’s value at 170 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 Bolton upon Dearne (1086)
- Mills: 10 mills (valued at 3.47 shillings)
Other Settlements in Strafforth
- Adwick [le Street]
- Adwick [upon Dearne]
- Armthorpe
- Aston
- Attercliffe
- Auckley
- Aughton [Hall]
- Austerfield
- Balby
- Barnbrough
- Barnby [Dun]
- Bentley
- Bilham [House]
- Billingley
The Meaning of the Name
The name Bolton upon Dearne is of Anglo-Saxon origin. Its final element derives from the Old English word tūn, 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’.
Remarkably, the name has changed little since 1086, when the Domesday scribes wrote it as Bolton upon Dearne.
Listed Buildings Near Bolton upon Dearne
Historic England records 6 listed buildings within about a mile of Bolton upon Dearne. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade I
- Church of St Andrew - 0.06 km
Grade II
- Animal Shelter With Hay Loft and Attached Stables to South-east of Number 67 (Grange Farmhouse) - 0.31 km
- Barn and Cartshed to South of Number 67 (Grange Farmhouse) - 0.33 km
- Bolton-Upon-Dearne War Memorial - 0.33 km
- Grange Farmhouse and Attached Farmbuildings to East - 0.34 km
- Bolton Mill Bridge - 0.77 km
Scheduled Monuments Near Bolton upon Dearne
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 1 lies within roughly a mile of Bolton upon Dearne:
Bolton upon Dearne Today
Today Bolton upon Dearne lies within the administrative area of Barnsley, and the settlement recorded a population of 6,744 at recent figures. Nine and a half centuries separate that figure from the small rural community the Domesday survey recorded here in 1086.
Read more about modern Bolton upon Dearne on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
- Adwick upon Dearne - 2.2 km SE
- Goldthorpe - 2.2 km NE
- Wath upon Dearne - 2.8 km SW
- Billingley - 2.8 km NW
- Mexborough - 2.8 km SE
- Thurnscoe - 3.0 km N
Heritage Around Bolton [upon Dearne]
Photographs of churches, listed buildings and monuments in the vicinity, contributed by volunteers to the Geograph project and reused here under a Creative Commons licence.
© Steve Fareham · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© David Wilkinson · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© David Wilkinson · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
Images © their respective photographers, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 and reused here with attribution. Photographs depict listed buildings, churches and monuments near this settlement and may show neighbouring villages.
Data derived from the Open Domesday project (opendomesday.org), based on the Domesday Book dataset compiled by Professor J.J.N. Palmer and team. The Domesday Book (1086) is in the public domain.
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