The Tofts and the Wandels: Echoes of the Deserted Medieval Village of Danby

One of the most striking features of Danby Dale is its parish church, standing rather alone about three kilometres from the present village. Castleton and Ainthorpe sit a little closer, yet the church remains a solitary figure in the landscape. In the photograph, it can be seen just to the right of centre, north of that wooded gill, as if keeping a quiet watch over the dale.

Heritage records point to the fields north of St Hilda’s church as the site of the original medieval village of Danby, founded in the twelfth century and lived in until the seventeenth-century enclosures swept away its old pattern of life¹Beresford’s Lost Villages. University of Hull. NMR No 27958. HER No NYMR 825. Domesday reference YORK 23N18 and note;34. 31N10. SN, L14. https://dmv.wordpress.hull.ac.uk/²NYMNPA HER Records No:  3535. Settlement at Danby Dale .

This abandoned village naturally drew the interest of the nineteenth-century vicar of Danby parish, the Reverend R. C. Atkinson³Atkinson, Rev. J. C. “Forty years in a moorland parish; reminiscences and researches in Danby in Cleveland” 1891. APPENDIX D. THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT VILL OF DANBY.. He had long suspected that the medieval vill stood in these very fields. His reasoning was simple: in earlier centuries, churches and chapels were not placed at a distance from those they served. He delved into ancient conveyances, place names and Domesday clues, seeking firmer ground for his theory.

He pointed to the term “toft,” a word denoting an enclosed yard. North of the church he found a compact cluster of six or eight fields then still known collectively as the Tofts, their name preserved today in Tofts Lane. The size of this area matches what is known from 1272, when the township needed space for at least thirty-five homes, each with its own toft.

Atkinson also turned to the fields running down towards the Beck, known as the Wandels. The name reaches back to an early farming vocabulary and describes enclosed land belonging to a small settlement, distinct from its common ground. The Wandels lie separated from the Tofts only by Wandels Lane, a neat alignment that strongly hints at the layout of the lost community.

• 1
  Beresford’s Lost Villages. University of Hull. NMR No 27958. HER No NYMR 825. Domesday reference YORK 23N18 and note;34. 31N10. SN, L14. https://dmv.wordpress.hull.ac.uk/
• 2
  NYMNPA HER Records No:  3535. Settlement at Danby Dale 
• 3
  Atkinson, Rev. J. C. “Forty years in a moorland parish; reminiscences and researches in Danby in Cleveland” 1891. APPENDIX D. THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT VILL OF DANBY.