In the beginning....

The name "Walton" is fairly common in England - there are several villages and districts with the same name. One of the origins of the name is as a reference to a "village of the Welsh" or serfs. The Welsh being the native Britons living in what we now know as England.

When the Romans left and the Romano-Britons had to fend for themselves, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived from the area now known as Germany and the Netherlands to occupy large areas of the former Roman province. Indeed, some were already here at the request of the Romans, supposedly to help defend this far-flung province of the Roman Empire.

A settlement was already in existence when the Saxons arrived in the 7th century. The name has changed over the centuries from Weala-tun in Saxon days, through Waleton in the Domesday Book, Waton later in Norman times, settling on Walton in the Middle Ages.

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Sources: John Goodchild Loan Collection;
Walton Chronology by Margaret Vernon (1978);
Waterton's Wanderings in South America, by Charles Waterton, edited by the Rev. JG Wood (1880);
A History of Walton by Peter Wright (1985);
Wakefield Express; local residents and J.S. Sargent.
Council Tax Information Booklets, City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council.