CYHHA, an Old English thane passed otherwise into oblivion, had cultivated a forest clearing and given his name to what we now call Keighley. This the Norman clerks found, whilst compiling William the Conqueror's Domesday Book in 1086: "In Chichelai, Ulchel, and Thole, and Ravensuar, and William had six carucates to be taxed".

We are indebted to those Normans for our first written record of the district. The Saxon landscape they surveyed emerges sketchily, its heavily wooded valleys dotted with clearings (-ley and -thwaite place-names).

Land was measured by the carucate, traditionally the extent that could be cultivated with one plough and eight oxen in one year - upward of 120 acres, by a probably generous local estimate.

In Utley (Utta's clearing). one William was taxed a carucate; William and Gamelbar shared another at Oakworth (oak-tree enclosure). William held carucate at Newsholme (new houses); Ravensuar, two at Laycock (small stream); Ardulf, one at Riddlesden (Rethal's valley) - probably the same Ardulf who, with four carucate at Morton (moorland farmstead), ranked as the locality's biggest landowner; whilst Ernegis had one at Marley (a clearing frequented by martens) and a half at Hainsworth (Hagena's enclosure). "and they are waste", having presumably suffered during the Conqueror's subjection of the North.

Reproduced with permission,
© 1974 Ian Dewhirst