The 1086 Domesday survey records the settlement of Willerby, entered under the hundred of Burton in Yorkshire.

Other Settlements in Burton

The Meaning of the Name

The name Willerby is of Scandinavian origin. Its final element derives from the Old Norse word bý, 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’.

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 Willerby.

Listed Buildings Near Willerby

Historic England records 9 listed buildings within about a mile of Willerby. Listing protects structures of special architectural or historic interest, graded I (exceptional), II* (particularly important) and II.

Grade II*

Church of St Peter - 0.37 km

Grade II

Wall and Gateposts Approximately 10 Metres South of Church of St Peter - 0.39 km
Milestone Approximately 200 Metres South of Willerby Grange - 0.63 km
Staxton and Willerby War Memorial - 0.95 km
Foldyard Wall and Attached Building at Rear of Staxton Farmhouse - 1.11 km
Range of Buildings Attached to Hertford Cottage - 1.12 km
Pear Tree Farmhouse - 1.17 km
White Cottage and Attached Wall at Right - 1.2 km
Methodist Church - 1.28 km

Scheduled Monuments Near Willerby

Scheduled monuments are nationally important archaeological sites given legal protection. 1 lies within roughly a mile of Willerby:

Staxton Brow entrenchment - 1.36 km

Willerby Today

Today Willerby lies within the administrative area of Ryedale, and the settlement recorded a population of 751 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 Willerby on Wikipedia .