This article appeared in the "Leicester Advertiser" on 11th January 1958

It was one of a series of articles entitled “How our villages got their names"

“A hamlet of Tugby, a small village standing in a low situation on the north and south of the turnpike” wrote John Nichols, introducing East Norton in the East Goscote section of his History of Leicestershire. Nichols’s eight volumes on the county appeared between 1795 and 1811. He gathered for them a great amount of information, some of which was provided by local antiquarians and the clergymen in parishes.

In the mind’s eye we tend to think of all the villages of the eastern side as having high positions. The landscape is undulating and East Norton is in the shelter of a valley, its parish extending to Finchley Bridge on the Rutland border. The village is 13½ miles from Leicester and 5½ miles from Uppingham.
Today it remains a small place, its population is down to 93 “and that’s counting babes all” said a native who spoke of a dying community.
In this lament he sounded like a peasant of 1652. That was the year of enclosure for East Norton, an early date.Whatever good the enclosing of open fields did in some parts of England Dr. WG Hoskins has told us, that in the Midlands and particularly in Leicestershire, the blow to the local peasant economy eventually killed it.
Norton is a very common place name, it means north tun, a homestead or village north of another. An early spelling was Nortone. In the Domesday survey the population, excluding the landholders amounted to 16, three sokemen, nine villeins, and four borders. The Diocesan returns of 1563 gave 15 households in East Norton. For what they might be worth as guides to population the Hearth Tax returns of 1670 showed 23 people paying tax, and four were exempt. The population figure of 1801 was 123 and by 1851 it had risen to 151, which appears to have been the village’s peak. The Census of 1931 gave East Norton a population of 92, whilst that of 1951 showed 111. The difference is only 19, but in such a small society it was an increase of importance. And now that it is down to 93, the villager’s figure, it means a loss that amounts to something.

East Norton is not in near contact with any industry other than that of agriculture, which is becoming increasingly mechanical, and this with the change to be seen in the hunting field, fewer second horsemen about now, must make an impact on the population of many of the local villages.
There are a number of empty cottages in the village. One inhabitant said five, another seven. The seven probably included the Old Police House and the White Bull Inn for which the owner could not find a tenant when it was for sale a long time ago.The White Bull Inn on the main road next door to the Petty Sessions Courtroom and on the other side of the Courthouse is the Old Police House. When a new house for the police was built a few years ago, it was proposed to remodel the old house for use as waiting rooms and lavatory accommodation for the Courthouse.

The plans for this have just been passed and none too soon for the courtrooms had neither a place for witnesses waiting to be called, nor any lavatories. They depended on the White Bull for these facilities and when it closed, a delightful procedure associated with the East Norton Courts came to an end. It had been the custom to call the names of witnesses in the White Bull and loudly in the way that witnesses are ordinarily summoned, but without, when one knew the circumstances, any loss of dignity of the law.
This courthouse serves a far flung petty sesional division reaching from Billesdon, Cold Newton, Cranoe, Neville Holt, Drayton, Great Easton, and a dozen other parishes near and far. It is probably in the centre of a particularly spread out division but it is also, when public services are in mind, one of the most isolated courthouses in the country. An offender living in say, Great Easton, having struggled to reach East Norton court would undoubtedly promise to keep the peace for the rest of his life and mean it.
If someone was to work out the average age of East Norton’s inhabitants, it would be pretty high. There are a great many elderly people, but nothing there to encourage the younger generation to settle in the village.
There is no piped water: Tugby is the furthest point reached by a mains service. The Norton people can look forward to running water in their homes when the River Dove scheme matures.

In its very early history a great part of East Norton belonged to Richard Bassett and his wife Maud Ridel. They founded the Priory of Launde and gave five virgates of Norton land to the Augustinian Order. At the dissolution the Manor of East Norton was given to Gregory Cromwell and Elizabeth his wife, and to the longest lived of them during the King’s pleasure.
Then there was Thomas Oliver owning, said Nichols “ a capital messuage and certain lands” in East Norton. He died in 1570 when his son and heir Richard was 22.
Nichols mentioned in this family “a curious artisan in limning whose pieces of very small models drawn exactly to life do set forth his ever living praises”
Engravings of two Olivers, Isaac the limner and Peter were used in his Leicestershire History.
A Blount had the Lordship in 1641, and when the enclosure came in 1652/3 it was by “consent of parties” but undoubtedly not all parties.

Nine freeholders polled in 1722 and 16 in 1755, a significant advance in independent farming.A later Lord of the Manor was Henry Dummer whose widow married Nathaniel Dance, a notable painter and third son of the elder George Dance.

Some time later an Earl of Denbigh, Thomas Babbington of Rothley and the heirs of Suckburgh Ashby of Quenby are shown as owning land at East Norton and then John Heycock, a wealthy grazier, was the principal inhabitant of the village and owned about 15 houses.

A survey of 1877 gives Thomas Chamberlayne as Lord of the Manor and the Honourable Harry Tyrwhitt Wilson of Keythorpe Hall and Major Charles Heycock as being landowners. There are Heycocks in the church records for about 300 years. East Norton Hall was rebuilt in 1871 and possibly of stone from Tilton quarry. Its present owner is Mr H T H Heycock who farms his estate. The hall is an imposing house in extensive grounds. Mrs Heycock is a daughter of Lady Denbigh and the late Mr Paget Fielding Johnson who was a director of Fielding and Johnson the worsted spinners. Her uncle, the late Mr W S Fielding Johnson had the unusual distinction of winning the MC with the Royal Flying Corps in the 1914/18 war and the DFC with the RAF in the last one, when at the age of 50 he was the oldest RAF officer on flying operations. His son Hugh, killed in action, also won the DFC. Mr and Mrs Heycock lived at Billesdon before coming to the Hall about 18 months ago.
Mr John Edward Cheesewright who farms, is churchwarden and his wife is a member of the Billesdon Rural District Council. Mr Cheesewright is a really important pillar of the church of All Saints for the Rector the Rev Eric Siddall is also Rector of Allexton where he lives and has now three parishes under his care.

In small communities the people incline to be around their TV sets if they have one. In quiet East Norton they once had a big annual bust-up—a whist drive to aid the Institution for the Blind.
This was started in the early 1920’s by the village blacksmith, Mr George Bedford, helped by his wife and daughter. It was held in the Justice Room of the courthouse which was loaned free. But a time came when a charge of thirty shillings was asked for the room and that was a blow to East Norton’s annual social evening. However the whist drives had a run of 28 years and until the beginning of the last war.
Mr Bedford. 83 on Christmas Eve, and Mrs Bedford,80, live in a cottage on the main road. He was the village blacksmith for 61 years.