The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Pockthorpe, entered under the hundred of Torbar in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Pockthorpe at 56.6 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Pockthorpe supported a recorded population of 39 villagers, 3 smallholders, 11 freemanmen, working 22 ploughs between them.

The drop in value is hard to miss. Before 1066, Pockthorpe was worth 20 shillings; by 1086 that had dropped to 13 shillings – a fall of 35%. 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 Pockthorpe (1086)

Mills: 4 mills (valued at 18d)
Meadow: 1 league * 7 furlongs mixed measures
Woodland: 4 * 4 furlongs

Other Settlements in Torbar

The Meaning of the Name

The name Pockthorpe 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 Pockthorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Pockthorpe

Historic England records 2 listed buildings within about a mile of Pockthorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II