Norton: look back at Commercial Street’s past manor houses

Howard Campion, trustee at the Malton and Norton Heritage Centre, reports.

IT seems that Norton's Commercial Street has been the location of three Manor Houses.

Only one of these is still in residential use, and although it is a grade two listed building, no official photos are available.

It is known as 'The Elms' and is located behind the wall on the right of the street (pictured).

'The Elms' is located behind the wall on the right (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

The small white building adjoining the wall is no longer there.

The Elms was constructed in the eighteen hundreds and was lived in by the same local family for almost all of the twentieth century.

The second building, which can claim manor house status is almost next door - and is now 'The Union Inn'.

The building when it was a Manor (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

The building is The Union Inn today (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

It achieved licensed status during the eighteen hundreds and it is a fair assumption that its claim to fame preceded that of The Elms.

Its appearance today is reasonably unchanged.

The original manor house is now no more and it was somewhere in the angle created by Commercial Street and Mill Street (see the 1850 map and note alteration in street names).

The 1850 map (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

It can be assumed that the whole area was involved, as is shown on an early Ordnance Survey map kindly made available to me by Elizabeth Hodgson.

Read more from Howard:

• A look back at Malton's railway station
• A look back at Broughton Rise
• A defensive town wall once surrounded Malton, but what happened to it?
• Looking back at the history of York Road

The area outlined in blue on the 1850 map is where Norton Boys' School used to be: according to information in Richard Young's book The History of Norton College' (2015), land for the school was purchased in 1870/71 from Thomas Wray for £450.

The O.S. map (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

The only archaeological evidence for previous earlier buildings is tenuous: a 1908 Yorkshire Post article (see reprint) mentions an 'old wall' having been demolished.

The 1908 Yorkshire Post article (Image: Malton and Norton Heritage Centre)

However, the houses around and including 16 and 18 Mill Street (see 'X' on the O.S. map), as well as associated lanes, probably hold lots of information.