The settlement of Great and Little Sutton is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Willaston in Cheshire. The survey assessed Great and Little Sutton at 11.0 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Great and Little Sutton supported a recorded population of 12 villagers, 8 smallholders, 3 slaves, 4 freemanmen, working 7 ploughs between them.

The survey records Great and Little Sutton’s value at 4.25 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 2 manors at Great and Little Sutton 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 Great and Little Sutton (1086)

Mills: 2 mills (valued at 7d)
Meadow: 12 None

Other Settlements in Willaston

The Meaning of the Name

The name Great and Little Sutton 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 Sutton.

Listed Buildings Near Great and Little Sutton

Historic England records 12 listed buildings within about a mile of Great and Little Sutton. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*