Bishop Norton is a village and the main settlement of the civil parish of the same name in the West Lindsey district of Lincolnshire, England.

The parish is bounded in the east by the old course of the river Ancholme, in the west by the line of the Roman road known as Ermine Street.

This was administered as part of the larger estate based on Stow, one of twelve manors until the see of Lincoln was established after the Norman Conquest.

[3] This Prebendary manor supported the Prebend of Bishop Norton who was one of the senior clerics who formed the Chapter for the cathedral church at Lincoln.

It was based upon the now extinct village or hamlet of Crossholme which was sited between Bishop Norton and nearby Glentham.

In addition to the manors, the settlements within the modern day civil parish include, Bishop Norton, the hamlet of Atterby, and that part of Spital-in-the-Street which lies north of Mellows Beck and east of the centre of Ermine Street (A15).

Additionally there are good number of more isolated farmsteads within the parish, generally to the east of the village towards the river Ancholme on both Atterby and Snitterby Carrs and Low Place.

According to information provided by the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies in Canterbury,[7] the parish registers for Bishop Norton were commenced in 1587.

This along with the Peculiar Court gives good reason why the Vicar at St Peter's in Bishop Norton was also responsible for the Chapel at Spital-in-the-Street, despite it not being within the parish.

The parish church of St Peter's is a relatively modern construction, possibly from about 1737, but with earlier artefacts within the fabric, such as the Twelfth century Tympanum inserted within an internal wall.

A medieval boundary ditch that may, or may not, have belonged to an earlier church dated to between 1066 and 1500 was discovered in substrate deposits on the site.

Middle Saxon finds from the ninth and tenth century have been found here and in other places immediately adjacent to the church grounds.

Prior to the formation of the county council in 1889 the system of local government was fractured and dependent on many different structures.

The entrance is a Doric porch with Venetian window above, and above that in the pediment is a circular light garlanded with foliage and tied up with a bow.

The drawing room has a delicate oval-pattern plaster ceiling with inset Wedgwood plaques depicting antique heads.

[15] The Lincolnshire Historic Environment Record (HER) provides an enormous amount of detail finds and a great deal of information relating to cropmarks, aerial photography since 1946 and of structures that have been discovered mainly during contemporary works.

These are generally, but not exclusively at the eastern end of the parish, suggesting that the river was the important natural feature for people at that time.

At the western end of the parish between the modern village and Atterby mill there is evidence of both a villa and a possible Roman settlement.

What is clear in these records is the sheer scale and spread of the finds making the probability of archaeology throughout the parish rank highly.