Danby Wiske in the Domesday Book (1086)
The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Danby Wiske, entered under the hundred of Land of Count Alan in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Danby Wiske at 52.8 carucates of taxable land.
At the time of the survey, Danby Wiske supported a recorded population of 29 villagers, 5 smallholders, 6 freemanmen, working 15 ploughs between them.
The drop in value is hard to miss. Before 1066, Danby Wiske was worth 40 shillings; by 1086 that had dropped to 6 shillings – a fall of 85%. 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.
Resources Recorded at Danby Wiske (1086)
- Meadow: 274 acres
- Woodland: 4 * 3 furlongs
Other Settlements in Land of Count Alan
- Achebi
- Agglethorpe
- Ainderby [Mires]
- Ainderby [Quernhow]
- Aiskew
- Aldbrough
- Allerthorpe [Hall]
- Ascam
- Ascham
- Asebi
- Aske [Hall]
- Askrigg
- Aysgarth
- Baldersby
The Meaning of the Name
The name Danby Wiske 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 Danby Wiske.
Listed Buildings Near Danby Wiske
Historic England records 6 listed buildings within about a mile of Danby Wiske. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade I
- Danby Wiske Church - 0.25 km
Grade II*
- Lazenby Hall - 0.35 km
Grade II
- Manor House - 0.07 km
- Wiske Bridge 1782 by John Carr - 0.28 km
- Wiske Bridge - 0.28 km
- Danby Hill - 1.13 km
Scheduled Monuments Near Danby Wiske
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Danby Wiske:
Danby Wiske Today
Today Danby Wiske lies within the administrative area of Danby Wiske with Lazenby, and the settlement recorded a population of 366 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 Danby Wiske on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
- Lazenby Hall - 0.0 km N
- Hutton Bonville - 2.0 km N
- Birkby - 4.0 km N
- Yafforth - 4.1 km S
- Little Langton - 4.2 km SW
- Great Langton - 4.5 km SW
Heritage Around Danby [Wiske]
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.
© Oliver Dixon · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© JThomas · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Gordon Hatton · 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.
Location
54.3807°N, -1.4842°W · Land of Count Alan hundred, Yorkshire
View larger map on OpenStreetMap →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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