The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Carperby, entered under the hundred of Land of Count Alan in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Carperby at 1 carucate of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Carperby supported a recorded population of 6 villagers, 2 smallholders, 2 slaves, working 2 ploughs between them.

The survey records Carperby’s value at 1 shilling 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 Carperby 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 Carperby (1086)

Sheep: 17
Meadow: 1 acres
Woodland: 2 acres

Other Settlements in Land of Count Alan

The Meaning of the Name

The name Carperby is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, 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’.

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 Carperby.

Listed Buildings Near Carperby

Historic England records 19 listed buildings within about a mile of Carperby. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*