Elton on the Hill is a hamlet and civil parish in the Rushcliffe district, in Nottinghamshire, England and within the Vale of Belvoir. A population of 114 was reported at the 2021 census.
Location and facilities Elton lies about east of Nottingham. It straddles the A52 trunk road, from which Station Road runs north towards Orston and Sutton Lane south, with Sutton-cum-Granby being the nearest hamlet in that direction. Elton has a population of 114 people and is in the Rushcliffe district. It has an area of and an altitude of 22–37 metres (72–121 feet) above sea level. Since 2010 the village has been part of Newark parliamentary constituency (instead of Rushcliffe). The member since June 2014 has been the Conservative Robert Jenrick.
The village pub/restaurant (Elton Cuisine, once a pub called the Manor Arms) was sold and converted into residential accommodation in 2020. There is bed-and-breakfast accommodation at The Grange, an early 19th-century farmhouse with parts dating back to 1725,Photograph: Retrieved 28 September 2010. owned and run by the ex-Scotland FA footballer Don Masson and his wife. Elton Camp, near the station, has been used by the Girl Guides for 80 years.Notts Guides: Retrieved 28 September 2010. There is commercially owned coarse fishing on a site off Redmile Lane, which also has a five-berth caravan site.Fishery: Retrieved 28 September 2010. The fish ponds are fed by Moor Dyke, the one stream to flow through Elton. The Vale of Belvoir Inn and Hotel (originally a private house called Whatton Vale, later a guest house called The Haven) stands on the boundary of Elton and Whatton-in-the-Vale, at the junction of the A52 with Redmile Lane.A picture of the hotel: Retrieved 26 November 2010.
The nearest station is Elton and Orston, but this offers a service of only one train in each direction on Monday to Saturday, including bank holidays. The stationmaster's lodge and ticket office (1855, architect Thomas Chambers Hine) were demolished in the 1970s.Picture of the station buildings in 1967 The signal box in 1963 Retrieved 19 February 2011. There are regular trains to Nottingham, Grantham and Skegness from Aslockton, away. The village is served by a local hourly bus between Bingham and Orston.833 Retrieved 13 July 2021.
Elton has never had a school, although a handful of pupils were taught privately at a house near the station in the 1960s. Children usually attend the primary school in Orston and secondaries in Bingham, Bottesford or Nottingham.
Buildings The fabric of the small Anglican church of St. Michael and All Angels is partly medieval but heavily restored with stucco rendering in 1857, when the tower was rebuilt.Nikolaus Pevsner: Nottinghamshire. Buildings of England series (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951). Retrieved 28 September 2010. Previously, the village was a joint parish with Granby, but in March 2017, it joined with five others in a parish group called Wiverton in the Vale. It is in the dioceses of Southwell and Nottingham. Since 2019 the rector has been Rev. Rachel Mitchell.
The church and several churchyard tombstones are Grade II listed. They include, just south of the chancel, a table tomb to Margaret Launder, wife of A. Collin Launder, who died on 22 December 1780.English Heritage: Retrieved 21 October 2010. The Latin epitaph reads, "Were it right for me to indulge in private grief, as a husband I should be justified in weeping for you, who have been taken away. Yet spare your tears, nor let anxiety distract you. No one who has lived well dies wretchedly. The honour commonly accorded to you is less than your deserts. So, my wife, you have gone where goodness will be regarded as real honour. O one dear to me, farewell; yet I hope the time will come when I shall be with you again, if by any means I shall be worthy."A Short Guide to the Parish Churches of the Bingham Rural Deanery, ed. J. Pickworth-Hutchinson. (Bingham: Deanery Chapter, 1963). About ten yards away is a group of late 18th-century slate gravestones, including one to Thomas Mann – no relation to the novelist.English Heritage: Retrieved 21 October 2010. Two smaller slate gravestones, also listed, are dated 1703 and 1720.English Heritage: Retrieved 21 October 2010. One is a "Belvoir angel", a type of stone in Swithland slate typical of the Vale.Nottingham Post Retrieved 1 July 2016. The earliest monument to a lord of the manor is to Langford Collin (1700 – 2 August 1766), who also owned estates at Beeston and Chilwell.University of Nottingham mss catalogue. Retrieved 27 November 2010. On Collins's Nottingham background see the 1909 Transactions of the Thoroton Society: Retrieved 29 December 2010. There is a modern gravestone just to the west of the church recording the death of one Harry Potter.
There used to be a large, plain, early 19th-century parapeted manor house,Picture of Elton Manor: Retrieved 9 November 2010. with extensive grounds. This was demolished in 1933 by its last owner, W. Noël Parr, a Nottingham solicitor who lived in the Old Rectory until 1957. The adjuncts that remain are an 18th-century gateway into Sutton Lane, with a lodge (19th century, extended in the 1950s, once the sub-post office), the red brick walls of kitchen gardens with a fort-like Grade II listed gazebo, thought to date from the late 18th or early 19th century,English Heritage: Retrieved 21 October 2010. and a grey brick brew house, now inhabited and enlarged. On the main road towards Bottesford is a small ashlar, Grade II listed gamekeeper's lodge in Tudor style, built in 1842 but likewise enlarged.English Heritage: Retrieved 21 October 2010. The name "Elton Manor" was purloined in the 2010s for a new family house opposite the site.
The extensive Old Rectory on Station Road dates from the early 19th century and has some historicist features.The Shell Guide to Nottinghamshire (London, 1984). Entry under "Elton".
Names Until recently, "Elton-on-the-Hill" (hyphenated) was the name of the church parish and "Elton" of the contiguous civil parish. However, Capper's A Topographical Dictionary of the United Kingdom... (London, 1825) lists "Elton-super-montem, a parish in Bingham hund[red]. Notts."Retrieved 28 September 2010. The name in Saxon times was "Aylton", but it was referred to as "Olleton" in a deed by which Roger de Bussi, Busli or Builli and his wife Muriel transferred the manor and advowson to "God and the Church of St. Mary of Blyth and the monks there serving God."Thoroton's History of Nottingham, Vol. 1, 1790: Retrieved 13 October 2010. The name appeared as "Elleton" in an Inquisition (survey) taken in 1283.Thoroton's History... Buildings belonging to Elton Manor and the Rectory were whitewashed with black paintwork in the early 20th century, as are a couple to this day, so that Elton was nicknamed the "Magpie Village".
Earlier history Elton ("Ayletone") in the 1086 Domesday Book had 14 households (11 villeins and 3 free) and a church. The lord in 1066 had been Earl Morcar, whose lands lay mainly in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. The lord at the time of Domesday was Ralph of Neufmarché and the tenant-in-chief Roger of Bully, who is mentioned in connection with 381 other places as lord or tenant-in-chief, mainly in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. They include Bingham and East Bridgford and other nearby places.Domesday site Retrieved 14 April 2019.
The feudal dues paid in the Middle Ages to Blyth in money and kind were high and appear to have stunted growth of the village. Then came successive sales leading to increased rents and fines. Having belonged from Domesday to the Dissolution to the Priory of Blyth, it "came into the possession of someone by the name of York, who sold it to Sir John Lion, Citizen and Alderman of London, who left it to his nephew, who sold it to a man named More, whose stepson in [the Nottinghamshire historian] Thoroton's time 'obtained the utmost profit the Lordship was any way able to yield him by the means of the extremest rack rents now paid.'"J. D. Chambers: Nottinghamshire in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd e. (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1966 ), p. 8, quoting Thoroton's History... The farmland of Elton and most nearby villages was still farmed by the open field system in 1790. Some fields today are ridged, but it is unclear whether the ridges follow the lines of medieval strips or formed part of a later system of drainage. Even before the enclosures, the village and church were described as small, and an account of the tithes paid records that apart from the rectory and the "Manor, or Hall-Farm" there were only eight farms and twelve cottages, "so that it seems there is not much above Half so many Farmers as in old Time."Thoroton's History...
Rev. William Selby, inducted in 1686, was a dissolute Rector. Bingham court records of 25 October 1709 report that "John Trinbury, in justification of his assault upon the Rector of Elton complained that at the funeral of Ellen Ragsdale 3 or 4 years earlier, the said Rector was so drunk that he could not say the usual prayers for the dead but fell asleep at the reading desk and had to be disturbed by the Parish Clerk, and then he went to the grave with the corpse and bid them put her in saying 'God help thee poor Nell' without any other prayers or ceremony and afterwards was led home by the Clerk. On the following day the Rector answered in a similar sworn statement that he was abused by the said John Trinbury in a very scandalous manner being called a knave, a rascal and a 'paultry scrub' and having his clothes pulled off his back by the said John and his wife and daughter." The Rector had been charged in December 1708 for blasphemy for having uttered the question, "Was God Almighty a drone? If not what was he doing before he made the Earth?"Bingham history site: Retrieved 15 November 2010.
Turning to a later, slimmer account of Elton's history:White's Directory of Nottinghamshire, 1853 Retrieved 27 August 2010. "In the Saxon times it was called Ayleton, and was afterwards of the fee of Roger de Busli, who gave it to the Priory of Blyth. At the dissolution of the monasteries it was granted to the family of York, from whom it passed to the Lions, Mores,The estate of Elton was sold in 1699 to cover legacies in the will of Gabriel More of Grantham, including one of £200 to a cousin, Francis Jephson of Elton. Retrieved 27 November 2010. Collins and Launders,Marriage entry in Elton church register: "Cornelius Launder, p. St. Peter, Nottingham, & Mary Collin. 8 September 1767" Retrieved 11 December 2010. and is now possessed by William Fletcher Norton Norton Esq., who resides in the manor house, a large and handsome mansion. [He] is patron of the rectory, which is valued in the King's books at £8 0s 5d, now £286, and is enjoyed by the Rev. Robert Weatherell. The church, dedicated to St Michael, is a small humble edifice, which Thoresby describes as being 'dove house topped'. The parish was enclosed in 1808, when land was allotted in lieu of all tithes.This was carried out by the private statute Elton (Nottinghamshire) Inclosure 1807 (47 Geo. 3 Sess. 1. c. 2) The feast is on Sunday after old Michaelmas Day [10 or 11 October]....