Downholme is named in the Domesday Book, compiled by Norman commissioners in 1086, entered under the hundred of Land of Count Alan in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Land of Count Alan

The Meaning of the Name

The name Downholme is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word holmr, an island or patch of raised ground in marsh. 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 island’.

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 Downholme.

Listed Buildings Near Downholme

Historic England records 6 listed buildings within about a mile of Downholme. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*

Church of Saint Michael and All Angels - 1.0 km

Grade II

Home Farmhouse - 0.48 km
Downholme Hall Ruins - 0.57 km
Old Vicarage - 0.6 km
Cross Approximately 10 Metres to South of Church of Saint Michael and All Angels - 0.99 km
Coffin Approximately 3 Metres to South of Chacel Door of Church of Saint Michael and All Angels - 1.0 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Downholme

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

How Hill large univallate hillfort - 0.91 km

Downholme Today

Today Downholme lies within the administrative area of Richmondshire, and the settlement recorded a population of 43 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 Downholme on Wikipedia .