Great and Little Preston in the Domesday Book (1086)
The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Great and Little Preston, entered under the hundred of Skyrack in Yorkshire.
Other Settlements in Skyrack
- Adel
- Allerton [Bywater]
- Alwoodley
- Arthington
- Austhorpe
- Baildon
- Bardsey
- Barwick [in Elmet]
- Bichertun
- Bicherun
- Bingley
- Birkby [Hill]
- Bramhope
- Burden [Head]
The Meaning of the Name
The name Great and Little Preston 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 Great and Little Preston.
Listed Buildings Near Great and Little Preston
Historic England records 9 listed buildings within about a mile of Great and Little Preston. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade II*
- Church of St Mary - 0.11 km
Grade II
- Sundial Approximately 10 Metres South of Church of St Mary - 0.11 km
- Barn and stables approximately 50 metres north of Little Preston Hall - 0.37 km
- Little Preston Hall - 0.42 km
- Milepost at Se 381 300 - 0.64 km
- Smeaton House Farmhouse and Attached Wall - 0.72 km
- Dovecote and stables/outbuilding approximately 20 metres north of Gamblethorpe Farmhouse - 1.1 km
- Stables to Former Swillington House - 1.24 km
- Ice House Approximately 250 Metres West North West of Stables to Former Swillington House - 1.28 km
Scheduled Monuments Near Great and Little Preston
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Great and Little Preston:
- Length of Grim’s Ditch immediately north of Gamblethorpe - 1.11 km
- Length of Grim’s Ditch partly under Bullerthorpe Lane 620m north of Gamblethorpe - 1.23 km
Great and Little Preston Today
Today Great and Little Preston lies within the administrative area of Leeds, and the settlement recorded a population of 2,035 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 Great and Little Preston on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
- Swillington - 0.0 km N
- Temple Newsam - 2.0 km W
- Colton - 2.8 km NW
- Kippax - 3.0 km E
- Scotton Thorpe - 3.2 km W
- Austhorpe - 3.2 km N
Heritage Around [Great and Little] Preston
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.
© Betty Longbottom · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Betty Longbottom · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Mick Melvin · 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.
Data derived from the Open Domesday project (opendomesday.org), based on the Domesday Book dataset compiled by Professor J.J.N. Palmer and team. The Domesday Book (1086) is in the public domain.
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