The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Toulston, entered under the hundred of Barkston in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Toulston at 5.8 carucates of taxable land.

The survey records Toulston’s value at 0d 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.

1 of 2 manors within Toulston are recorded as waste in 1086, with the remainder still productive. This partial devastation suggests the settlement was caught in the path of the Harrying of the North but not entirely destroyed - or that recovery had begun in some holdings by the time of the survey.

The survey lists 2 manors at Toulston 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.

Other Settlements in Barkston

The Meaning of the Name

The name Toulston 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 Toulston.

Listed Buildings Near Toulston

Historic England records 19 listed buildings within about a mile of Toulston. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade I