1) A clay pit, from <i>leirr</i> an Old Norse word.
In one very early undated reference it had already given rise to a place-name in the open field: n.d. tres acras et dimidiam in Lairpiteflait, Stapleton. It was not uncommon through the fourteenth- century: 1316 et terciam partem cuiusdam arzilli, qui vocatur le Layrpittes , Moor Monkton
1341 abutting … North on Layrepittes , Thorpe Salvin. Clay had a variety of uses in that period, as a translated court roll entry shows: 1338-9 ‘he took clay in a certain pit to repair his walls’, Aldborough. The word survived in several dialects but not it seems in Yorkshire and from the sixteenth century at least it had been replaced by ‘clay’.