Hornby in the Domesday Book (1086)

Hornby appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, entered under the hundred of Allerton in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Allerton

• Ainderby [Steeple]
• Appleton [Wiske]
• Arncliffe [Hall]
• Birkby
• Borrowby
• Brompton
• Cowesby
• Crosby [Grange]
• Dale [Town]
• Deighton
• Ellerbeck
• Foxton
• Girsby
• Hawnby

The Meaning of the Name

The name Hornby is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, 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’.

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 Hornby.

Hornby Today

Today Hornby lies within the administrative area of Hambleton, and the settlement recorded a population of 241 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 Hornby on Wikipedia .

Nearby Domesday Settlements

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

• Great Smeaton - 2.2 km SW
• Appleton Wiske - 2.2 km SE
• Middleton - 2.2 km SE
• Little Smeaton - 2.8 km SW
• Girsby - 3.2 km N
• Birkby - 4.2 km SW