The settlement of South Cliffe is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Cave in Yorkshire. The survey assessed South Cliffe at 3 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, South Cliffe supported a recorded population of 6 villagers, working 3 ploughs between them.

The survey records South Cliffe’s value at 3.5 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.

Resources Recorded at South Cliffe (1086)

Mills: 1 mill (valued at 7d)

Other Settlements in Cave

The Meaning of the Name

The origin of the name South Cliffe is not securely established from its modern form alone; like many settlement names in the North it likely combines an Old English or Old Norse personal name with a landscape term.

Remarkably, the name has changed little since 1086, when the Domesday scribes wrote it as South Cliffe.

Listed Buildings Near South Cliffe

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

Grade II

Church of St John - 0.57 km
Red House - 1.01 km

South Cliffe Today

Today South Cliffe lies within the administrative area of East Riding of Yorkshire, and the settlement recorded a population of 93 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 South Cliffe on Wikipedia .