STOCKTON WARD 



NORTON 



corn and had billeted men and horse's upon him, and 

 praying that he might have respite from his creditors 

 till he could sell part of his land.^^ 



After the Restoration Nonconformists were 

 numerous, Bishop Cosin lamenting' that Mr. Davison, 

 vicar of Norton, hath jo many obstinate men and 

 women in his parish that will not yet let down their 

 conventicles.' " The Quakers of Norton are men- 

 tioned in 1676, when John Whiting and his sister 

 visited them ; she died there and was buried in the 

 Friends' burial ground.'^ Their meeting-house 

 dates from 1 671, and was restored in 1902. About 

 1850 it was used by the Primitive Methodists." 

 John Wesley preached at Norton in 1770,'* and a 

 VVesleyan Methodist chapel was built in 1824 in 

 succession to an earlier one.'" More recently (1886) 

 a Congregational chapel has been built .it Norton. 



The growth of Stockton in recent times has had 

 an important influence on Norton, which has become 

 practically a suburb of that town. 



It was formerly the custom at Eastertide for the 

 men to take off the women's shoes on Easter Day, 

 the women retaliating on the Monday by taking off 

 the men's hats ; shoes and hats were redeemed by 

 presents to the captors.'' 



Among the natives of Norton is reckoned a surgeon 

 of distinction, Anthony White ; born here in 1782, 

 he was educated at Cambridge, and became surgeon 

 at Westminster Hospital. He died in 1 849, and 

 has a memorial in Norton Church.'' Christopher 

 Middleton, of the HuJson Bay Company, who was 

 employed on one of the attempts to find a north- 

 west passage round America in 1741-2, spent the 

 end of his life here.-" So did Jeremiah Moore, who, 

 according to the story, had by the devices of an elder 

 brother been made a slave in Turkey and on his 

 escape was pressed for the navy ; he at last succeeded 

 to the family estate and died in 1753.-' 



Thomas Baker, a farmer and Quaker preacher, 

 lived at Holme House, on the road to Portrack, and 

 acquired the nickname of ' Potato Tom ' because he 

 introduced the potato into the county about 1736, 

 and was very successful in cultivating that and other 

 garden produce.-^ 



Another celebrity of the place was Thomas Jefferson 

 Hogg, a lawyer and literary man, born at Norton in 

 1792, being the eldest son of John Hogg of Norton 

 House. He was educated at Oxford, and there made 

 the acquaintance of Shelley, becoming his friend and 

 biographer. He died in 1862.-' 



The earliest record of S'ORTON is 

 MJNORS in the Liier Fitae of Durham, which 

 records the grant of it to St. Cuthbert 

 by Ulfcytel son of Osulf, who included all its appur- 

 tenances with sac and with soc.-* The benefactor 

 is not otherwise known, but an Osulf was Earl of 

 Northumberland in the middle of the 10th century.'-^ 

 The grant probably included the whole of the ancient 



parish — i.e., Norton with Stockton. From that time 

 It appears to have been part of the possessions of the 

 bishopric. Between 1 109 and 1 1 14 Henry I granted 

 a market on Sundays at Norton at the request of 

 Bishop Ranulph ; its customs were to be the same as 

 those of the king's demesne manors elsewhere in 

 England.-* From Bishop Hugh's survey made in 

 1 183 it appears that there were in the vill thirty 

 villeinage tenements of the usual type, the extent of 

 each being 2 oigangs. The villeins were exempt 

 from the payment of cornage on account of the lack 

 of pasture. There were also twenty farmers with 

 tenements of the same extent held by a rent of half a 

 mark, certain carrying services and four boondays in 

 the autumn. Twelve cottiers had tofts and crofts 

 and 13 acres in the fields, for which they paid 16/. 

 and helped in haymaking and stacking the corn. 

 There were one free tenant and one drengage tenant. 

 The whole vill rendered two milch cows and the 

 toll of beer 5;. ; the pinder had 8 acres and thraves 

 of corn and rendered 80 hens and 500 eggs ; the 

 mills had 8 acres and the meadows near the mill and 

 rendered 20 marks a year. The meadow of North- 

 meadow was in the bishop's hands. ^' 



In 1348 it was reported that Roger de Wighton 

 had made an encroachment on the Carrside (Ker- 

 syde).^' In 1350 the mills were in the hands of 

 the husbandmen.-' William Hunter had a forge in 

 1353.'° The bishop's park is mentioned in 1354 

 in a complaint that the villagers of Billingham had 

 encroached on it by a watercourse at the U'est 

 bridge for six years past." The court rolls here 

 cited are fairly complete from I 348. 



The survey of about 1384 shows that money pay- 

 ments were accepted in place of all or most of the 

 services of bondage tenants, the total payment from 

 a normal holding being 14/. id. Only twenty-nine 

 such holdings are mentioned ; seven of the tenants 

 had two ' bondages ' each, twelve had one each, and 

 the other three were held by groups of two or four 

 tenants. Each servant of a bond tenant of the age of 

 sixteen or upwards paid u. a year in lieu of autumn 

 boon-works. Each ' selffode ' of whatever position, 

 dwelling in the vill, paid -^d. a year. There were 

 now only eleven cottiers, the remaining tenement 

 being held by them in common. Each paid 6J. rent 

 for a cottage and an acre of land and i i ^J. as the 

 equivalent of his services. The gre.it forge rendered 

 8^., two others paid \d. e.ich, and another zd. The 

 dovecote was rented at 6d. The tenants held the 

 common oven, rendering 66/. id., and the toll of ale, 

 rendering 10/. ; in place of two milch cows or 

 ' metrich ' they paid 10/. The mills of Norton, 

 Stockton and Hartburn, with ' crooks ' of meadow 

 near them and Longacre, rendered in all ^^26 I 3/. \d. 

 Sixteen parcels of Exchequer land which had been 

 approved from the waste since 1 1 84 were mostly 

 demised at small rents. An exceptional holding was 



" Hill. MSS. Com. Rep. iv, App. 96. 



1' Quoted in Did. Nat. Biog. under 

 Cosin. 



" Whiting, Early Piey ExempliJteJ, 56. 



^^ Fordycc, Hiir. and Antiq. of co. Palat. 

 of Dur. ii, 205. 



'*" Wesley, Journals, iii, 380. 



*' Mackenzie and Ross, I'icw of Co. of 

 Dur. ii, ;. 



1"^ Inform, from the Rev. Canoa Scott, 

 vicar. 



" Diet. Nat. Biog. 



'° Mackenzie and Ross, loc cit. 



'* Hutchinson, Hi:t. and Antiq. of Dur, 

 ii, 1 12. 



" Fordyce, op. cit. ii, 204. 



» Diet. Nat. Biog. 



" L/A»r TiMf (Surt.Soc), 57; Kemble, 

 Codix Dip!. 925. 



'^ Searle, Anglo-Saxon Bps., Kings and 

 Nohlei. Another Osulf was earl in 

 1065. 



" Surtees, Hiit. and Antiq. of co. Palat. 

 of Dur. iii, 1 54. The charter is ad- 

 dressed to Thomas Archbishop of York 

 and attested by Robert Bishop of Lin- 

 coln. 



" V.C.H. D:.r. i, 330-1. 



'" Dur. Rec. cl. 3, no. 12, foL 4. 



" Ibid. fol. 46. 



*> Ibid. fol. 90. 



" Ibid. fol. 1 29. The time given goes 

 back beyond the plague year. 



39 



