The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Kirkby, entered under the hundred of [West] Derby in Cheshire. The survey assessed Kirkby at 15.2 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Kirkby supported a recorded population of 10 villagers, 3 smallholders, 23 freemanmen, working 12 ploughs between them.

The survey records Kirkby’s value at 4.5 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 Kirkby 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 Kirkby (1086)

Meadow: 10 acres

Other Settlements in [West] Derby

The Meaning of the Name

The name Kirkby is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, a farmstead or village, while the first element appears to represent the church (ON kirkja). Taken together the name probably meant something close to ’the church 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 Kirkby.

Listed Buildings Near Kirkby

Historic England records 7 listed buildings within about a mile of Kirkby. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*

Church of St Chad - 0.91 km

Grade II

Gate Piers to South of the Vicarage - 0.77 km
Vicarage - 0.81 km
Stables to North of the Vicarage - 0.82 km
Kirkby Hall Lodge - 0.92 km
Kirkby War Memorial - 0.93 km
Sefton Cottage - 1.08 km

Kirkby Today

Today Kirkby lies within the administrative area of Knowsley, and the settlement recorded a population of 45,564 at recent figures. Nine and a half centuries separate that figure from the small rural community the Domesday survey recorded here in 1086.

Read more about modern Kirkby on Wikipedia .