Ousethorpe Farm in the Domesday Book (1086)

The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Ousethorpe Farm, entered under the hundred of Warter in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Warter

• Grimthorpe [Manor]
• Hawold
• Heslington
• Huggate
• Kilnwick [Percy]
• Langwith [Lodge]
• Meltonby
• Millington
• Naburn
• Warter
• Wetwang
• Yapham
• [Great] Givendale
• [Little] Givendale

The Meaning of the Name

The name Ousethorpe Farm 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 Ousethorpe Farm.

Scheduled Monuments Near Ousethorpe Farm

Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Ousethorpe Farm:

• Ousethorpe medieval settlement, moat and mill 310m south of Ousethorpe Farm - 0.37 km
• Cross base and shaft and cross base at St Margaret’s Church - 1.45 km

Ousethorpe Farm Today

Today Ousethorpe Farm lies within the administrative area of Millington.

Read more about modern Ousethorpe on Wikipedia .

Nearby Domesday Settlements

Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:

• Grimthorpe Manor - 1.0 km N
• Millington - 2.0 km E
• Great Givendale - 2.0 km N
• Meltonby - 2.2 km NW
• Little Givendale - 2.2 km NE
• Kilnwick Percy - 2.2 km SE