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Norton, latterly Norton Disney, occupies land between the Roman Fosse way and the River Witham. It comprises mainly farm land but with a considerable acreage of woodland, and this would appear to have been the case at the time of the Norman conquest, except that, at that time, much of the presently cultivated land would have been heath and moor land.
It is known that a small entrenched camp was sited not far from the river. While no signs of this camp are visible today, the suffix 'ton' in the village name, encourages the inference that the early settlers would have been Anglo-Saxon rather than Scandinavian. It is also known that at an earlier date a Roman Villa was sited near the Roman road, now the A46, at the higher (Western) end of the village.
The first reference to Norton appears in the Doomsday Book, in which it is recorded that Judith held taxable land in the village. Judith was the niece of William the Conqueror and she married Waitheof, a Saxon, and Earl of Huntingdon, who became involved in a plot against William and was executed in 1076. Judith and her descendants held the land at Norton until the extinction of the barony of Huntingdon in 1237.
While it is not until after that date that the Disney family is known to have been in Norton, it is quite possible that they were in the village beforehand, as sub-tenants of Judith and her heirs. The Disney's were descended from one of William's retainers, Lambert, who, coming from the town of Isigne near Bayeux in Normandy, styled himself de Isigne, which eventually became anglicised as Disney.
During the 500 years or so that the Disney family were in Norton, numerous interesting events took place. One of the earliest recorded was the illegal setting up of a gallows by one William d'Iseny of Norton during the reign of Henry III.
At the time of the Civil War, a later William Disney, who built the manor house in 1625, was on the parliamentary side. With Newark being a Royalist garrison and in close proximity, William took his family to live in Lincoln for the last two years of the war. The Disney family continued their connection with Norton Disney until 1674 when Molyneux, son of the aforementioned William Disney, sold Norton to Christopher Monk, the second Duke of Albemarle.
From then until 1830, Norton Disney was in the hands of absentee landlords. Accordingly, matters of local history were more obviously influenced by certain people and events from further afield.
Christopher Monk was the son of General Monk, the first Duke, and Ann Clarges, the daughter of an army farrier, who subsequently became Duchess of Albemarle. General Monk was a well-known figure of the time and one to whom the royal House of Stuart was most indebted for his part in the restoration of the monarchy after the Commonwealth.
Christopher was an only son and inherited vast wealth upon the death of his parents when he was only 16. It was at that age that he married a lady some 14 years his senior, the eldest daughter of Henry Ogle, who later became Duke of Newcastle. Christopher's profligacy ensured that, despite certain good business transactions, including the acquisition of Norton Disney at the age of 22, most of his disposable wealth rapidly disappeared, and in 1686 he took the step of approaching James II for favours.
The king, who found Christopher something of an embarrassment, appointed him Governor of Jamaica where he arrived in 1687. During the next year or so, after a period of misadministration and shady transactions, he succumbed to a combination of the tropical climate and his dissolute life-style. On Christopher's death, the Duchess returned to England complete with a small fortune, the result of her husband's shadier dealings in Jamaica. This lady, who became known as 'the mad Duchess of Albemarle', suffered from the delusion that the Emperor of China wished to marry her, and for the rest of her life lived out a charade based upon that precept. She did, however, enter into a second marriage, this one to the Earl of Montague whom she outlived, and, despite her eccentricity, did not die until 1734 when she was 96.
On the death of the Duchess, the succession to the estate devolved upon Walter Clarges, a descendant of Christopher's mother and by this time a baronet, and the property of Norton Disney, together with other holdings, remained in the hands of his heirs for the next 150 years.
The last Baronet died, unmarried, around 1830, and his landed estates, including Norton Disney, were left to General Hare, an army veteran, who assumed the name Clarges on his accession.
After the General's death, the property passed to the Jervis family, who were descended from Mary Clarges, the only daughter of the second Baronet. The Jervis family were Viscounts St. Vincent and the fourth Viscount's death is recorded in two of the church's monuments.
The next brother in line succeeded as the fifth Viscount St. Vincent in 1885, and he became the first owner to establish residence in Norton Disney since 1674.
The St. Vincent's continued as owners of the Norton Disney estates until 1919 when the property was sold to the Brown family, timber merchants of Woolaton, in whose hands some of the and the patronage of the church remain to this day.
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