Menethorpe is named in the Domesday Book, compiled by Norman commissioners in 1086, entered under the hundred of Acklam in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Menethorpe at 1 carucate of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Menethorpe supported a recorded population of 4 villagers, 4 smallholders, 1 slave, working 1 plough between them.

The survey records Menethorpe’s value at 1 shilling 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.

Resources Recorded at Menethorpe (1086)

Meadow: 2 acres
Woodland: 2 acres

Other Settlements in Acklam

The Meaning of the Name

The name Menethorpe 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 Menethorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Menethorpe

Historic England records 10 listed buildings within about a mile of Menethorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II