Deightonby Fields appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, entered under the hundred of Strafforth in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Deightonby Fields at 1.2 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Deightonby Fields supported a recorded population of 3 villagers, 2 smallholders, 1 slave, working 2 ploughs between them.

The survey records Deightonby Fields’s value at 3 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 Deightonby Fields (1086)

Meadow: 30 acres

Other Settlements in Strafforth

The Meaning of the Name

The name Deightonby Fields 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 Deightonby Fields.

Listed Buildings Near Deightonby Fields

Historic England records 4 listed buildings within about a mile of Deightonby Fields. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II