It appears from Norman charters that the name of the place was Kirkby, a name, no doubt, bestowed upon it when church and hamlet were founded as a Christian settlement, in the old days when King Oswald of Northumbria embraced the new faith, an event probably commemorated by the cross which gave name to the wapentake still known of Oswald’s or Osgod’s Cross. Kirkby, however, is not named in Domesday, though probably even then a burgh. It is evidently included in the manor of Tateshall, or Tanshelf, which belonged to the king, and appended to which was the soke of Manesthorp, Barnebi, and Silchestone. Tateshall formed, and still forms, a part of the town of Pontefract.
No doubt this is the “Taddenes Scylf,” where, in 947, King Eadred received the fealty of Archbishop Wulfstan and the Northumbrian Witan, as recorded, with their speedy breach of it, in the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. The place must even then have been of importance, and there can be but little doubt that the Witan met on the site of the later castle. Also it continued to be an important place, for at the Conquest it was a demesne of the Crown, and is recorded in Domesday as rated at £20., having three mills, and containing a hospital for the poor. Domesday, no doubt, means Pontefract Castle, when it records that, “Omnis tornour sedet infra metam castelli Ilberti secundum primam mensuram et secundum novissimam mensuram sedet extra.” Meta is here clearly the castle garth or boundary of its immediate lands, not the military enceinte or curtain about the position, with respect to which no measurement could be in error, nor is it the Castelry, which was a much larger area.
The parish of Pontefract, which is large, is composed of six townships, of which one is Pontefract proper. The parish is one of twenty composing the wapentake or hundred.
Leland, who calls the fortress “Snorre Castle,” says that before the Conquest it belonged to Richard Aschenald, and then to Ailric, Sweine, and Adam, his son, grandson, and great grandson. This last had two daughters, married to Alex. de Crevequer and Adam de Montbegon. Dodsworth calls Aschenald, Aske, still a great Yorkshire name, and points out, what indeed is still very evident, that the Norman works stood in part on an artificial hill, on which no doubt stood the house of the English lord, dispossessed by the Conqueror.
Ailric is a real person, and a Domesday landowner, and before the Conquest held many manors. Sweine was his son, and inherited, and gave a church and chapel to the monks of St. John’s Church at Pontefract. Ailric held his lands, much reduced, under the Norman grantee, as did Sweine, and his son Adam Fitz Sweine, who founded Bretton Priory, and died about 1158, having been a very considerable person. Charters by both Sweine and Adam are found in the Pontefract cartulary.
William I. was at Castleford on the Aire in the winter of 1069, and as he stayed there three weeks he probably found the means of inspecting so strong a place as the English House at Kirkby, and when he granted the district to Ilbert de Lacy it may reasonably be supposed that he followed his usual practice of directing a castle to be built.
Mr. Freeman suggests that the name of Pontefract may have arisen from some incident connected with this passage of the Aire; others have thought that, like Richmond and Montgomery, it was an imported name. Ordericus, however, as Mr. Freeman remarks, refers to it as Fractus-Pons, not Pons-Fractus, “Rex ... præpeditur ad fracti pontis vada,” as though the words were in a state of transition from a description to a proper name. The change of name certainly was adopted slowly, for while an early charter by Robert de Lacy, the second lord, has the passage, “de dominio suo de Kirkbi,” a later one has “Deo et Sᵗⁱ Johanni et Monachis meis de Pontefract,” while Hugh de Lanval, the intrusive lord, at least as late as 1120, employs the older name. Robert of Castleford, a good local authority, writing about a century after the event, says the name commemorates the escape of a multitude of people from drowning, when a bridge broke down beneath them. There is, however, no river within two miles of Pontefract capable of drowning a multitude.
Camden derives the name from the breaking down of a bridge or causeway that traversed the marshy valley still called the Wash, the springs of which rise close north-west of the castle and cross its approach from Knottingley, at Bubwith Houses, where, in the time of Edward II., John Bubwith held lands juxta veterem pontem de Pontefract, about a quarter of a mile from the castle, which, indeed, proves the existence of a bridge, though not of a broken one. How water came to be here collected will be explained when the defences of the castle are treated of. Perhaps the real truth of the matter may lie in the suggestion of Hopkinson, that the castle was called after a place of that name belonging to De Lacy in Normandy.
A few marks of Roman occupation have been discovered here, and but few. Legeolium, the station of the district, seems to have been at Castleford, three miles distant.
But whatever may have been the origin of the fortress, or of its evidently pre-Norman earthworks, its recorded history commences with Ilbert de Lacy, to whom William granted Knottingley, a large portion of the wapentake, and other lands, including about 150 manors, chiefly in the West Riding,—where they fill seven pages of Domesday-book,—Nottingham, and Lincoln, of which those in Yorkshire were erected into an Honour, whereof Pontefract, the strongest and most important place, became naturally the chief seat. Ilbert, though no doubt of near kin to the Herefordshire Lord of Ewyas and Holm-Lacy, was a different person. He is thought to have built Pontefract Castle before 1080, commencing it probably in consequence of the visit of the Conqueror, in 1069. If Sir H. Ellis be right, and the castle then built be that alluded to by the Domesday entry, it was speedily completed. Ilbert also endowed the chapel of St. Clement within the castle, which, in some form or other, long survived. He lived into the reign of Rufus, from whom he had a confirmation of his grants. By his wife, Hawise, he left Robert and Hugh.