Dringhouses is a suburb, formerly a village, in York, in the unparished area of York, in the York district, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is bounded by the Knavesmire, an open area of land on which York Racecourse is situated, to the east, Askham Bog and the A64 to the south, Woodthorpe and Foxwood to the west, and Acomb and Holgate to the north. It is part of the City of York ward is called Dringhouses and Woodthorpe which covers an area of and had a population of 11,084 at the 2011 Census. It is located approximately two and quarter miles from York City Centre. The name derives from "Drengeshirses" (1109) and means "the houses of the drengs", a "dreng" being a man who held land by a particular kind of free tenure. It is a mixture of housing estates and large open spaces, with the East Coast main railway line running through the middle. History Five Neolithic stone axes provide the earliest evidence for human activity in the area of Dringhouses which is located on a ridge of glacial moraine running southwest from York that may have been used during the Bronze Age as a well-defined trade route. A Roman road linking Eboracum (York) with Calcaria (Tadcaster) was constructed on this route along which civilian settlements developed as shown by archaeological evidence including a Roman cemetery and timber-framed buildings from the 1st to 2nd-century. The Old Norse name from which Dringhouses is derived, indicates the villagers were the descendants of Halfdan, the Viking leader who had taken the area from the Angles and had shared the land among his warriors in 876. The free land of the Drengs became a Norman manor - ultimately owned by Archbishop Walter de Gray who granted it to his brother Robert in 1244 and thence to John, Lord Grey of Rotherfield. The title passed to Sir John Deincourt and his ancestors until it was inherited by the Wilkinson family. The last Lord of the manor, Col. Wilkinson, died on 13 January 1941. The subsequent break-up of the estate meant that most of the land in the village was no longer owned by one family. There was a long dispute over the Wapentake of the Ainsty - which included Dringhouses - from the early Middle Ages. In 1276 the Courts of Edward