Burghwallis has around 290 residents living in a delightful setting a mile off the A1, six miles north of Doncaster and six miles south of Pontefract. ‘Burgh’ in general tends to mean town/township in Old Norse and Old German. The parish is referred to simply as “Burg” in the Doomsday book, becoming Burghwallis in the early 13th century when Dionysia – one of seven surviving daughters of the local lord – was married into the Wallis family. The Wallis family line persisted among the local landowners through to the early 17th century by which time the name of the settlement was so far removed from that of the local aristocracy that the succeeding Anne family appear not to have thought to change it. The name literally means “village of the Wallis family”