Toft

Icel. topt, tuft a piece of ground, messuage, homestead; a place marked out for a house or building; in the special later Icelandic sense a square piece of ground with walls but without roof: Dan. toft an enclosed home-field. It does not occur often in the earliest English, but it is found as the second part of many place-names m districts which were affected by the Danes, toft renders campus; in Piers Plowman it means an elevated piece of ground : I seign a toure on a toft, Prol. 14; while later, according to Kenuett, it is' a field where a house or building once stood.' In the following passages it may mean the enclosed ground in which the house stood :-- Healf ðæt land æt Súðhám, innur and úttur, on tofte and on crofte, Cod. Dip. Kmbl. iii. 317, 7. Nǽfre myntan ne plot ne plóh, ne turf ne toft, L. O. 13; Th. i. 184, 7 ; Lchdm. iii. 286, 23. [Ic an] intó ðe túnkirke on Mardingford .