The settlement of Painsthorpe is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Acklam in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Painsthorpe at 5.2 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Painsthorpe supported a recorded population of 2 slaves.

The survey records Painsthorpe’s value at 2.31 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 5 manors at Painsthorpe 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 Painsthorpe (1086)

Meadow: 1.5 acres
Woodland: 1 acres

Other Settlements in Acklam

The Meaning of the Name

The name Painsthorpe 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 Painsthorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Painsthorpe

Historic England records 9 listed buildings within about a mile of Painsthorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade I