Mercaston in the Domesday Book (1086)
Mercaston is named in the Domesday Book, compiled by Norman commissioners in 1086, entered under the hundred of Litchurch in Derbyshire. The survey assessed Mercaston at 5.5 carucates of taxable land.
At the time of the survey, Mercaston supported a recorded population of 50 villagers, 3 smallholders, working 12 ploughs between them.
Something went badly wrong here between the two surveys. Before 1066, Mercaston was worth 30 shillings; by 1086 that had dropped to 20 shillings – a fall of 33%. Most Yorkshire villages that lost value on this scale were swept up in the Harrying of the North – William’s scorched-earth campaign of 1069–70.
Resources Recorded at Mercaston (1086)
- Mills: 1 mill (valued at 3d)
- Fisheries: 1
- Meadow: 120 acres
- Woodland: 6 * 4 furlongs
Other Settlements in Litchurch
- Allestree
- Alvaston
- Ambaston
- Arleston
- Aston [-on-Trent]
- Barrow [-upon-Trent]
- Bearwardcote
- Boulton
- Burnaston
- Chellaston
- Cottons
- Dalbury
- Egginton
- Elvaston
The Meaning of the Name
The name Mercaston 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 Mercaston.
Listed Buildings Near Mercaston
Historic England records 1 listed building within about a mile of Mercaston. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade II
- Shuckton Manor Farmhouse - 0.35 km
Scheduled Monuments Near Mercaston
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 1 lies within roughly a mile of Mercaston:
Mercaston Today
Today Mercaston lies within the administrative area of Derbyshire Dales, and the settlement recorded a population of 86 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 Mercaston on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
- Mugginton - 2.2 km SE
- Brailsford - 2.2 km SW
- Weston Underwood - 3.2 km E
- Ednaston - 3.6 km SW
- Bradley - 4.5 km NW
- Kedleston - 4.5 km SE
Heritage Around Mercaston
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.
© Nigel Aspdin · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Martyn Glover · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Clive Woolliscroft · 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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