The name of the village comes from the combination of the old Norse ‘skal’ and the Old English ‘tun’ meaning farm in the hollow and finds of flint arrow heads and jet ornaments indicate that people were living in the area 4,000 years ago but this story starts with the records in the Domesday Survey of 1086 which read :
In Scaltun Uhtræd had 1 manor of 2 carucates now Count Mortain has it
In Scaltun Aschil had 3 carucates of land to the *geld where there could be 2 ploughs. Now Robert has it and it is waste. †TRE it was worth 10s. [†TRE was an abbreviation for the Latin Tempore Regis Edwardii meaning value in King Edward’s time — *Geld meant tax as in Danegeld or Heregeld]
There is another record which credits Robert Malet with a further 4 carucates at Scaltun and as a carucate is usually reckoned to have covered about 120 acres the total area of Scaltun manors appears to have been approximately 1,080 acres.
The location of the two manors of Scaltun cannot be determined with absolute certainty but Uhtræd’s 2 carucates are thought to have stretched from Brunesdaleschede [Bungdale Head] to the river Rye, bounded on one side by Nettlebeck and Aldentoftes [Antofts] on the other and the land was granted by Hugh Malebisse to the Abbots of Rievaulx in the middle of the 12th century.
Aschil’s land stretched from Brunesdaleschede to the boundary of the manor of Begesland [Old Byland] which he also held.
Robert Malet was the son of William Malet who was granted the land by William I at the Great Council of York in 1069 and Robert inherited the land which he forfeited to the Crown after he fought on the wrong side in the rebellion against Henry I.
Count Mortain was the half brother of William I and his lands were also forfeited when he took part in an earlier rebellion and the two manors of Scaltun and many other manors previously held by Mortain and Malet were granted to Nigel d’Aubigny by Henry I in 1106 after the Battle of Tenchbrai.
Hugo Malebisse had held Scaltun land as a knight’s fee of Robert Malet and his Lordship of both Manors commenced when he held all the land as a knight’s fee first of d’Aubigny and then of Roger de Mowbray the son of d’Aubigny and his wife who was Gundreda de Gournay before they married. By the middle of the 12th century the Manor of Scaltun was held by Hugh Malebisse the son of Hugo and it is thought that it was he who built a manor house of which little remains except earthworks at the rear of what used to be Church Farm and is now a private dwelling.
