Monk Bretton

Coordinates: 53°34′42″N 1°24′54″W / 53.5784°N 1.4149°W / 53.5784; -1.4149

Monk Bretton is a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. It lies approximately two miles north-east from Barnsley town centre.

History

Monk Bretton has been a settlement since medieval times and was originally known as just 'Bretton'. It is sometimes thought to have taken its name from the twelfth-century Adam fitz Swain de Bretton, whose family owned much land in the area and who also founded Monk Bretton Priory. However, in the Domesday Book of 1086 the area is already known as Brettone, and the name may have originally meant 'Farmstead of the Britons', suggesting that a remnant of the old Romano-British population may have lived here into the Anglo-Saxon period. According to Domesday Book, the local Saxon lord in 1066 had been an individual called Wulfmer, who by 1086 had been replaced by a Norman lord, Illbert de Lacey, a major landholder associated with many other locations in the county. By 1225 the village was referred to as Munkebretton, ‘munke’ referring to the monks of the nearby Priory.