Little Houghton in the Domesday Book (1086)
The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Little Houghton, entered under the hundred of Strafforth in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Little Houghton at 50 carucates of taxable land.
At the time of the survey, Little Houghton supported a recorded population of 51 villagers, 40 smallholders, 35 slaves, working 80 ploughs between them.
By 1086 Little Houghton was worth 38.72 shillings, up from 24 shillings before the Conquest – which sets it apart from the many nearby villages left waste or devalued.
Resources Recorded at Little Houghton (1086)
- Mills: 1 mill (valued at 2d)
Other Settlements in Strafforth
- Adwick [le Street]
- Adwick [upon Dearne]
- Armthorpe
- Aston
- Attercliffe
- Auckley
- Aughton [Hall]
- Austerfield
- Balby
- Barnbrough
- Barnby [Dun]
- Bentley
- Bilham [House]
- Billingley
The Meaning of the Name
The name Little Houghton 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 Little Houghton.
Listed Buildings Near Little Houghton
Historic England records 4 listed buildings within about a mile of Little Houghton. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade II*
Grade II
- Middlewood Hall - 0.82 km
- Middlewood Lodge - 0.99 km
- Milepost Opposite Junction With Little Houghton Lane - 1.15 km
Scheduled Monuments Near Little Houghton
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 1 lies within roughly a mile of Little Houghton:
Little Houghton Today
Today Little Houghton lies within the administrative area of Barnsley, and the settlement recorded a population of 696 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 Little Houghton on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
- Great Houghton - 1.4 km NE
- Darfield - 1.4 km SW
- Billingley - 1.4 km SE
- Thurnscoe - 3.0 km E
- Clayton - 3.6 km NE
- Toftes - 3.6 km SW
Heritage Around [Little] Houghton
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.
© Steve Fareham · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Steve Fareham · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Bill Henderson · 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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