Shafton in the Domesday Book (1086)
Shafton is named in the Domesday Book, compiled by Norman commissioners in 1086, entered under the hundred of Staincross in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Shafton at 1.6 carucates of taxable land.
At the time of the survey, Shafton supported a recorded population of 3 smallholders, 7 freemanmen, working 1 plough between them.
The survey records Shafton’s value at 1.02 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 2 manors at Shafton 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 Shafton (1086)
- Mills: 3 mills
- Churches: 1
- Meadow: 5 None
- Woodland: 8 None
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 Shafton 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 Shafton.
Listed Buildings Near Shafton
Historic England records 1 listed building within about a mile of Shafton. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.
Grade II
Scheduled Monuments Near Shafton
Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Shafton:
- Deserted medieval village of Hodroyd, Felkirk - 1.49 km
- Site of post-medieval tannery, Felkirk - 1.56 km
Shafton Today
Today Shafton lies within the administrative area of Barnsley, and the settlement recorded a population of 3,395 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 Shafton on Wikipedia .
Nearby Domesday Settlements
Other places recorded in the 1086 survey within a few miles:
Heritage Around Shafton
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.
© Bill Henderson · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Bill Henderson · Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
© Carol Rose · 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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