The settlement of Weaverthorpe is recorded in William I’s Domesday survey of 1086, entered under the hundred of Toreshou in Yorkshire. The survey assessed Weaverthorpe at 3.2 carucates of taxable land.

At the time of the survey, Weaverthorpe supported a recorded population of 10 villagers, 6 smallholders, 8 slaves, working 8 ploughs between them.

The survey records Weaverthorpe’s value at 6.25 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 Weaverthorpe (1086)

Mills: 1 mill (valued at 7d)
Cattle: 11
Pigs: 36
Sheep: 212
Horses (cobs): 1
Meadow: 6 acres

Other Settlements in Toreshou

The Meaning of the Name

The name Weaverthorpe is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word þorp, an outlying or secondary farmstead. 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 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 Weaverthorpe.

Listed Buildings Near Weaverthorpe

Historic England records 7 listed buildings within about a mile of Weaverthorpe. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade I

Church of St Andrew - 0.38 km

Grade II

Effigy Approximately 3.5 Metres South of Porch of Church of St Andrew - 0.39 km
Lychgate, Attached Churchyard Walls and Footgate to South, to Church of St Andrew - 0.4 km
Rarey Farmhouse and Attached Walls - 0.63 km
Weaverthorpe War Memorial - 0.67 km
Dale Farm - 0.68 km
Dotterel Cottage Farmhouse - 0.94 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Weaverthorpe

Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 2 lie within roughly a mile of Weaverthorpe:

Medieval manor site - 0.45 km
Romano-British settlement - 1.59 km

Weaverthorpe Today

Today Weaverthorpe lies within the administrative area of Ryedale, and the settlement recorded a population of 357 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 Weaverthorpe on Wikipedia .