Great Driffield was the home of my mother's family for several centuries where they worked mainly as blacksmiths and millers, I thought it might be of some interest to anyone not knowledgeable of the town to give some notes thereon.
There has been some settlement or other there for over a Millennium, it being noted in the Domesday book as a village known as DRIFELD(T) which, over the course of time has become Great and Little Driffield. It was, at the time, described as a Saxon settlement in the Wapentake of Harthill Bainton, a district now forming part of the East Treding (since corrupted into Riding) of Yorkshire in England. Actually the inhabitants were of Danish and Scandinavian extract rather than Saxon.
It is, and has been known for several centuries, as ‘The Capital of the Wolds’ and lies 12 miles West of Bridlington; 22 miles to the North of Kingston Upon Hull; 30 miles East of York and 19 miles from Malton across the Wolds. It is, supposedly, the burial place of King Alfred the Great, but actually it was Alfred King of Northumbria who was buried in Little Driffield on 19th January 702. He expired of wounds sustained at the Battle of Ebberston near Scarborough, whilst repulsing the latest Danish invasion.
Prior to this in the 2nd Century the township was the capital of the independent kingdom of DARIA and there were settlements there back to the Bronze Age.
The Wolds are an area with a thin layer of soil over a chalk sub-strata with a very fertile area to the South leading to the Holderness plain.
Because of the remote position, the township which, in the early part of this Millennium was quite an important centre, did not develop and became something of a backwater, with a population of 2,300 in 1821. In the 19th. and 20th. Centuries, particularly since WW2, and due to improved roads and canals etc. the population has increased substantially.
