Rookwith is named in the Domesday Book, compiled by Norman commissioners in 1086, entered under the hundred of Land of Count Alan in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Land of Count Alan

The Meaning of the Name

The name Rookwith is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word viðr, a wood. 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 wood’.

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 Rookwith.

Listed Buildings Near Rookwith

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

Grade II

Rookwith House - 0.18 km
Smithy and Wash House to Rookwith House - 0.19 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Rookwith

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

Kilgram Bridge - 1.54 km
Kilgram medieval monastic grange - 1.58 km

Rookwith Today

Today Rookwith lies within the administrative area of Hambleton, and the settlement recorded a population of 27 at the 2021 census. Nine and a half centuries separate that figure from the small rural community the Domesday survey recorded here in 1086.

Read more about modern Rookwith on Wikipedia .