Langton Road is believed to be the original exit road from Norton to York and the south. Howard Campion, a trustee at the Norton and Malton Heritage Centre, looks back at its history.

THE road is mainly residential apart from St Peter’s Church, Norton College and Brooklyn, which was once a private all ages school. In the early 1950s it passed into local authority use as a Norton overflow in terms of classrooms and playing fields.

However, what is not always recognised is that Langton Road is a link between Norton and its suburb namely Sutton. This is remembered by house and street names in the Langton Road area (Sutton Lodge, Sutton Garage, Sutton Cottage and Sutton Street). There are few physical remains of Sutton apart from some land irregularities in a field off the right-hand side near to Bazley’s Lane.

In terms of names, Norton means ‘North Town’ and Sutton means ‘South Town’ is a simple but effective way of showing how the names of the two settlements originated. Other similar, but not so obvious, ‘twinnings’ can be found in local pairs of villages, such as Newton on Derwent/Sutton on Derwent near Pocklington.

Further back towards Norton, there has been confusion over the naming of the main roads. In order to access Langton Road by leaving Commercial Street at the first roundabout one goes into Wold Street which shortly becomes Langton Road at the point where Wood Street branches off it to the left.

Gazette & Herald: Norton racecourse building Norton racecourse building (Image: Ralph Taylor)

However, at one time a section of Langton Road beyond the Wood Street Junction was called Wold Road and it was generally accepted that this persisted until Sutton Street (once the site of training stables) branched off to the left-hand side. After Sutton Street, Langton Road finally ‘came into its own’.

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But there must have been some confusion with these matters for quite a while, as is shown by these entries in the 1891 and 1881 Census returns.

At the outer boundaries of Norton, there are several equestrian establishments and the road leads to a steeply graded Auburn Hill then into Langton itself. It could be that the original route towards York avoided this and took the easier way to the higher land by cutting across Scott’s hill in the direction of Thornthorpe.

Towards the top of Auburn Hill there was once Norton’s racecourse, owned by Lord Northorpe. For some reason, he had it ploughed up in 1861 but there are still visible remains of its building. An 18th century etching of a view from this area shows Norton’s factory chimneys prominent in the landscape, identified as most likely being in Norton’s Mill Street where some remains have been reported.