East Rigton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, entered under the hundred of Skyrack in Yorkshire. The survey assessed East Rigton at 0.4 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, East Rigton supported a recorded population of 6 smallholders, 1 slave, working 4 ploughs between them.

The survey records East Rigton’s value at 15d 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 East Rigton 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 East Rigton (1086)

Meadow: 4 None
Woodland: 5 None

Other Settlements in Skyrack

The Meaning of the Name

The name East Rigton is of Anglo-Saxon origin. Its final element derives from the Old English word tūn, 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’.

Remarkably, the name has changed little since 1086, when the Domesday scribes wrote it as East Rigton.

Listed Buildings Near East Rigton

Historic England records 11 listed buildings within about a mile of East Rigton. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade I