Gayton

Gayton is a rural village 5 miles from Northampton town centre in South Northamptonshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 544. It is situated on a hill close to the larger villages of Bugbrooke, Milton Malsor and Blisworth, with a linked public footpath network.

Sited near Watling Street, the ancient way from the ports of Kent to Wroxeter, Gayton was not recorded in the Domesday Book survey of 1086 but was probably the unnamed settlement in the Hundred of Towcester held by the knight Sigar of Chocques, who came from the village of that name near Béthune in the north of France. By 1162 it had passed to his relation Robert V of Béthune, being inherited in turn by his eldest son Robert VI, by his second son William II, by William's eldest son Daniel and then by Daniel's younger brother. This was Robert VII, who in 1242 sold the manor along with virtually all his other English properties to Robert of Guines. In 1248 Robert sold Gayton to Ingram of Fiennes, who in 1270 passed it to Michael of Northampton, a cleric.

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