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Alfketil 2 was a small landowner in the Yorkshire Dales whose single holding of 1½ carucates was worth an estimated 4s.
Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB
List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB
Holder 1066
Shire
Phil. ref.
Vill
Holder 1066 DB Spelling
Holder 1066
Lord 1066
Tenant-in-Chief 1086
1086
subtenant
Fiscal value
1066
value
1086 value
Holder 1066 ID conf.
Show on map
Yorkshire
6N26
Little Langton
Alchetel
Alfketil 'of Little Langton'
Gamel son of Carl
Alan, count
-
1.50
0.20
0.00
A
Map
Total
1.50
0.20
0.00
The three occurrences of the name Alfketil in Yorkshire are widely separated by distances of between 40 and 60 miles and each occurs at an estate of no more than 3 carucates. In those circumstances it is unlikely though not impossible that their holders were identical with one another. All three manors were in areas where William I allotted land in territorial blocks, so that succession does not help. The decisive factor in identifying three distinct individuals is that the name was common enough in Yorkshire for two different Alfketils to be listed among the sureties of Archbishop Ælfric of York (PASE: Ælfric 105) c. 1050 (Stevenson 1912: 12–13; Cooper 1969).
At Little Langton in Swaledale a vill of 7½ carucates was divided among four holders, with individual assessments written above their names in GDB. There were, however, only three manors. It is not clear which two landowners shared a manor, though the best guess would be the first two, Odil (Odhild 2) and Alfketil 2, on the grounds that neither occurs elsewhere and they each had 1½ carucates.
DB adds that Little Langton was ‘in the soke of Fleetham’, that is Kirkby Fleetham, a large vill only about a mile away, divided TRE between two manors held by Gamel and Uhtræd (Yorks. 6N: 56).
Bibliography
Cooper 1969: Janet Cooper, ‘The list of Ælfric’s festermen in the York Gospels’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 42 (1969), 328–32
Stevenson 1912: W. H. Stevenson, ‘Yorkshire surveys and other eleventh-century documents in the York Gospels’, English Historical Review, 27 (1912), 1–25
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