The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of North Anston, entered under the hundred of Strafforth in Yorkshire. The survey assessed North Anston at 5 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, North Anston supported a recorded population of 13 villagers, 9 smallholders, 5 slaves, working 11 ploughs between them.

The survey records North Anston’s value at 7 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.

Resources Recorded at North Anston (1086)

Mills: 1 mill (valued at 5d)
Cattle: 13
Pigs: 7
Sheep: 61
Meadow: 10 acres
Woodland: 100 acres

Other Settlements in Strafforth

The Meaning of the Name

The name North Anston 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 North Anston.

Listed Buildings Near North Anston

Historic England records 13 listed buildings within about a mile of North Anston. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade I