The settlement of Dowthorpe Hall is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Holderness [Middle Hundred] in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Holderness [Middle Hundred]

The Meaning of the Name

The name Dowthorpe Hall is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word þorp, an outlying or secondary farmstead. 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 outlying farm’.

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 Dowthorpe Hall.

Listed Buildings Near Dowthorpe Hall

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

Grade II

Southernwood - 0.82 km
Hazlemere Farmhouse - 1.16 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Dowthorpe Hall

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

Heavy Anti-aircraft gunsite at Old Ellerby, 600m south of Ellerby Grange - 1.12 km

Nearby Domesday Settlements

Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:

Langthorpe Hall - 1.4 km NE
Ellerby - 1.4 km SE
North Skirlaugh - 1.4 km NW
Oubrough - 2.0 km S
Rowton Farm - 2.8 km NW
Coniston - 3.0 km S

Heritage Around Dowthorpe [Hall]

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.

Priory Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Swine (2005)
© Stephen Horncastle · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

Priory Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Swine (2006)
© Paul Glazzard · 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.

Dowthorpe Hall in the Domesday Book (1086)