The Village around 1066, and the Domesday Book, 1087 taken from Great Ayton. A Yorkshire Village ed. Joni Essex, 2000

1066, the Norman Conquest.

Who would have thought that a quiet backwater like Ayton would be touched by the power politics of the eleventh century, but so it was.

Our Anglo-Saxon/Danish forbears tilled their fields, tended their cattle, enjoyed a measure of democracy and were Christian. We know the names of some of them – Asketil, Aldred, Thornarrna and Eadmund, who between them had three ploughs to till their land on the banks of the Leven which was worth all of thirty shillings.

The Conquest changed all that – William’s England was a two tier society – the rulers and the ruled! The two Atuns (Great Ayton and Little Ayton) were shared out between the King, his half-brother the Count of Mortain and one Robert Malet whose names appear on the Battle Abbey Rolls as fighting at Hastings; indeed the Count of Mortain is identified on the Bayeux Tapestry.

It could not be expected that the Lords of Northumbria who had always been reluctant to pay their tributes to an English King in the south would be happy to pay for the upkeep of a bastgrd who spoke only French! They were not -they rebelled as all true Yorkshiremen would! In revenge William ‘harried the north’- dwellings crops, cattle alt destroyed – the land ‘wasted’.

After almost twenty years William ordered the Great Survey to assess the value of the Crown lands and to see from which of his Vassal Barons he could squeeze more taxes. In fact the Survey registers nearly all Teesside as “Waste” -Marton, Acklam etc. Little Ayton, previously worth ten shillings has now ‘No Value’, and even the lands owned by the Norman Barons in Great Atun, though recovering a little better from the devastation had declined in value from sixty shillings to fifty-five and fourpence!

Robert Malet became Chamberlain before backing the wrong side in one of the freguent power struggles and both he and the Counts of Mortain eventually lost all their lands to the crown.

Ayton has gone through many changes growing into the beautiful village we love today, but none so terrible or as far reaching as that recorded in the first Domesday Book.