A wapentake is a term derived from the Old Norse, the rough equivalent of an Anglo-Saxon hundred. The word denotes an administrative meeting place, typically a crossroads or a ford in a river where attendance or voting would be denoted or conducted by the show of weapons.
The counties of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland and Lincolnshire were divided into wapentakes, just as most of the remainder of England was divided into hundreds. In some counties, such as Leicestershire, the wapentakes recorded at the time of the Domesday Book evolved into hundreds later on. In others, such as Lincolnshire, the term remained in use.
Wapentake is also the title of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
See also: Feudal measurement
