Southorpe appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, entered under the hundred of Holderness [North Hundred] in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Southorpe at 1 carucate of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Southorpe supported a recorded population of 4 smallholders, working 1 plough between them.

The survey records Southorpe’s value at 1 shilling 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 Southorpe (1086)

Meadow: 7 acres
Woodland: 6 acres

Other Settlements in Holderness [North Hundred]

The Meaning of the Name

The name Southorpe is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word þorp, an outlying or secondary farmstead, while the first element appears to represent the southern. Taken together the name probably meant something close to ’the southern 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 Southorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Southorpe

Historic England records 17 listed buildings within about a mile of Southorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade I