Old Boulby is named in the Domesday Book, compiled by Norman commissioners in 1086, entered under the hundred of Langbaurgh in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Old Boulby at 3.8 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Old Boulby supported a recorded population of 40 smallholders, 1 slave, 35 freemanmen, working 5 ploughs between them.

The survey records Old Boulby’s value at 3.6 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 Old Boulby 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 Old Boulby (1086)

Mills: 1 mill
Churches: 1
Fisheries: 0
Salthouses: 1
Meadow: 3 acres

Other Settlements in Langbaurgh

The Meaning of the Name

The name Old Boulby is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, 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’.

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 Old Boulby.

Listed Buildings Near Old Boulby

Historic England records 8 listed buildings within about a mile of Old Boulby. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II