The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Bowthorpe, entered under the hundred of Howden in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Bowthorpe at 10 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Bowthorpe supported a recorded population of 12 villagers, 12 smallholders, 4 slaves, working 6 ploughs between them.

The survey records Bowthorpe’s value at 15 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 Bowthorpe (1086)

Mills: 1 mill (valued at 1 shilling)
Meadow: 102 acres
Woodland: 2 * 1 leagues

Other Settlements in Howden

The Meaning of the Name

The name Bowthorpe 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 Bowthorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Bowthorpe

Historic England records 3 listed buildings within about a mile of Bowthorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*