"Compounds of —ern," says the authority, "were liable to get spelt in time with —orn or horn. A palmary example is Whitehorn, in Galloway, of which name we have the best information. Beda tells us that it meant "Candida Casa," i.e., "White House," being made of Hwit—white, and ern—house."
It is not to be expected that any mention should be found of Cawthorne earlier than that of the Conqueror's great National Survey, which was commenced in 1085, and completed about 1086.
The country around Cawthorne at the time of the Norman Conquest would be for the most part covered with woods and thickets on the higher ground, and with marshes on the lower, while the hand of man was gradually extending the clearings round the site of our present neighbouring villages and hamlets, which are all of them mentioned in the Survey.
In making that Survey, the King's commissioners were directed to impannel a jury in each Hundred or Wapentake, who were to declare on oath the extent and nature of every estate within its boundary; the name of its owner; the nature of its tenure; the quantity of pasture, arable, and wood land; its value before the Conquest, in the time of Edward the Confessor; its value at that present time; and also what payments were due from it to the Crown.
The account of the Manor of Cawthorne would be given by the jury impannelled in the Wapentake of Staincross. The old Deira, the Latinized British "Dour," of the Kingdom of Northumbria, had by this time become the County of Yorkshire, with its three greater divisions of "Trithings," since corrupted into "Ridings," and with all its lesser divisions of "Wapentakes," so called most probably from the old custom of touching (tac—touch) arms or weapons, when the hundreder or high constable of the district entered upon his office. The Stone Cross of the accustomed meeting-place—the moot—of this division, in or near the present village of Staincross, gave origin to its name, no doubt, as the "Wapentake of Staincross," as some Cross of St Oswald (642 A.D.) gave its name to the neighbouring "Wapentake of Osgodcross." Hunter remarks,
