[citation needed] There are woodlands, walking paths, manorial waste and two streams that lie within its boundary: Bracken Beck in the south and an unnamed tributary of Cawkeld Sinks (a small lake in nearby Kilnwick) in the east.

A section of the Minster Way crosses through the manor centre, from the south-east near Wedding Wood in Kilnwick to its northern boundary.

Bracken (historically spelt Bracenan, Brachen, Braken or Brackyn) is believed to derive its name from an abundance of the fern found there, which was cleared to form the settlement.

By May 957 his nephew, King Edgar the Peaceful, had seized final control from the remaining Danes and the estate of Bracken along with it.

The Anglo-Scandinavian estate was afterwards held directly by Edgar while King of Mercia, before his accession to the throne of England.

[4] This conformed with a policy initiated by Edgar's elder brother, Eadwig, of strengthening control over Viking settled areas by granting land within them to the archbishop, who was of Danish descent in this event.

[6] By 1118 the majority of the former estates of Erneis de Buron had been granted to Geoffrey FitzPayne Trussebut, who later founded the Augustinian Warter Priory in 1132.

[9] She was married to William d'Aubigny, Lord of Belvoir, one of the senior Sureties of King John I's Magna Carta.

When Agatha died in 1247, lordship of Bracken passed to her daughter, Isabel d'Aubigny, who had married Sir Robert de Ros, Lord of Helmsley, the great-grandson of William the Lion, King of Scots.

It was granted to his widow Elizabeth (d. 1362) in dower, with half of the manors of Kingston Lisle and Fawler, in exchange for those of Mundford, Fritwell and Lydiard Tregoze, which had originally been assigned to her.

[16] The seventh edition of A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, describes the manor in the late 1850s as: "BRACKEN, a township, in the chapelry of Kilnwick, union of Driffield, Bainton-Beacon division of the wapentake of Harthill; E. riding of York, 6¾ miles (S. W. by S.) from Driffield; containing 33 inhabitants.

In 1894–95 the manor was recorded in The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales: "Bracken, a hamlet and a township in Kilnwick parish, in the E.R.

[20][full citation needed] The Law of Property Act of 1925 abolished copyhold throughout the United Kingdom, which subsequently forced the conversion of existing tenures to freehold.