Royston in the Domesday Book (1086)
The settlement of Royston is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Staincross in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Royston at 20 carucates of taxable land.
At the time of the survey, Royston supported a recorded population of 13 villagers, 9 smallholders, 7 slaves, working 8 ploughs between them.
The survey puts Royston’s value at 10 shillings, the same as before the Conquest. Unchanged valuations are relatively rare in the North, where disruption was widespread.
Resources Recorded at Royston (1086)
- Fisheries: 2
- Meadow: 148 acres
Other Settlements in Staincross
- Adlingfleet
- Barnby [Hall]
- Barnsley
- Barugh
- Brierley
- Carlton
- Cawthorne
- Chevet
- Clactone
- Clayton [West]
- Darton
- Dodworth
- Hemsworth
- Hoyland [Swaine]
The Meaning of the Name
The name Royston is of Anglo-Saxon origin. Its final element derives from the Old English word tūn, 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’.
Remarkably, the name has changed little since 1086, when the Domesday scribes wrote it as Royston.
Listed Buildings Near Royston
Historic England records 3 listed buildings within about a mile of Royston. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade I
- Church of St John the Baptist - 0.29 km
Grade II
- Kirk Cross at Junction With Pinfold Lane - 0.85 km
- 100 102 and 104, High Street - 0.95 km
Scheduled Monuments Near Royston
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 1 lies within roughly a mile of Royston:
- Wayside cross known as Kirk Cross - 0.85 km
Royston Today
Today Royston lies within the administrative area of Barnsley, and the settlement recorded a population of 10,728 at recent figures. Nine and a half centuries separate that figure from the small rural community the Domesday survey recorded here in 1086.
Read more about modern Royston on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
- Carlton - 1.0 km S
- Notton - 2.2 km NW
- Shafton - 3.0 km E
- South Hiendley - 3.2 km E
- Cold Hiendley - 3.2 km N
- Ryhill - 3.6 km NE
Heritage Around Royston
Photographs of churches, listed buildings and monuments in the vicinity, contributed by volunteers to the Geograph project and reused here under a Creative Commons licence.
© P Neville · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Steve Partridge · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Steve Partridge · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
Images © their respective photographers, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 and reused here with attribution. Photographs depict listed buildings, churches and monuments near this settlement and may show neighbouring villages.
Data derived from the Open Domesday project (opendomesday.org), based on the Domesday Book dataset compiled by Professor J.J.N. Palmer and team. The Domesday Book (1086) is in the public domain.
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