The settlement of Byley is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Middlewich in Cheshire. The survey assessed Byley at 1 carucate of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Byley supported a recorded population of 5 villagers, 11 smallholders, 1 slave, working 4 ploughs between them.

The survey puts Byley’s value at 4 shillings, the same as before the Conquest. Unchanged valuations are relatively rare in the North, where disruption was widespread.

Other Settlements in Middlewich

The Meaning of the Name

The name Byley is of Anglo-Saxon origin. Its final element derives from the Old English word lēah, a woodland clearing or glade. 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 clearing’.

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

Listed Buildings Near Byley

Historic England records 2 listed buildings within about a mile of Byley. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II

Rosebank House - 0.38 km
Church of St John the Evangelist - 0.39 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Byley

Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 1 lies within roughly a mile of Byley:

World War II defences of the former airfield of RAF Cranage - 0.67 km

Byley Today

Today Byley lies within the administrative area of Cheshire West and Chester, and the settlement recorded a population of 234 at the 2021 census. Nine and a half centuries separate that figure from the small rural community the Domesday survey recorded here in 1086.

Read more about modern Byley on Wikipedia .