Grimthorpe Manor in the Domesday Book (1086)

The settlement of Grimthorpe Manor is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Warter in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Warter

• Hawold
• Heslington
• Huggate
• Kilnwick [Percy]
• Langwith [Lodge]
• Meltonby
• Millington
• Naburn
• Warter
• Wetwang
• Yapham
• [Great] Givendale
• [Little] Givendale
• [North] Dalton

The Meaning of the Name

The name Grimthorpe Manor 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 Grimthorpe Manor.

Scheduled Monuments Near Grimthorpe Manor

Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Grimthorpe Manor:

• Ousethorpe medieval settlement, moat and mill 310m south of Ousethorpe Farm - 1.28 km
• Cross base and shaft and cross base at St Margaret’s Church - 1.53 km

Nearby Domesday Settlements

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

• Great Givendale - 1.0 km N
• Ousethorpe Farm - 1.0 km S
• Little Givendale - 1.4 km NE
• Meltonby - 2.0 km W
• Millington - 2.2 km SE
• Hawold - 2.2 km NE