Great and Little Altcar in the Domesday Book (1086)

The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Great and Little Altcar, entered under the hundred of [West] Derby in Cheshire. The survey assessed Great and Little Altcar at 1.4 carucates of taxable land.

The survey records Great and Little Altcar’s value at 1.16 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.

The survey lists 3 manors at Great and Little Altcar 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.

Other Settlements in [West] Derby

• Ainsdale
• Allerton
• Argarmeles
• Aughton
• Barton
• Bootle
• Childwall
• Dalton
• Downholland
• Formby
• Halsall
• Hurlston
• Huyton
• Ince [Blundell]

The Meaning of the Name

The name Great and Little Altcar is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word kjarr, brushwood 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 marsh’.

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 Great and Little Altcar.

Listed Buildings Near Great and Little Altcar

Historic England records 10 listed buildings within about a mile of Great and Little Altcar. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II

• Old Spanker’s Cottage - 0.46 km
• Stables to North of Lovelady’s Farmhouse - 0.62 km
• Lovelady’s Farmhouse - 0.63 km
• Barn to North West of Lovelady’s Farmhouse - 0.64 km
• Stone Cross in Centre of Roundabout - 0.73 km
• Pump and trough to south of Hogshill Farm - 0.9 km
• Hogshill Farm - 0.91 km
• Former Convent of Our Lady - 1.02 km
• 6, School Lane, Formby - 1.05 km
• Dean’s Cottage - 1.16 km

Great and Little Altcar Today

Today Great and Little Altcar lies within the administrative area of Sefton, and the settlement recorded a population of 1,044 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 Little Altcar on Wikipedia .

Nearby Domesday Settlements

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

• Raven Meols - 1.0 km W
• Formby - 1.0 km N
• Ince Blundell - 3.6 km SE
• Barton - 5.8 km NE
• Downholland - 6.1 km E
• Ainsdale - 6.1 km N