East Winch's name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and derives from the Old English for the eastern pasture farmstead.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the manor was ruined apart from a single chimney stack, which remains the case today.

East Winch's parish church was built in the Perpendicular style in the late-Fourteenth Century under the leadership of the Howard family, by the Eighteenth Century the church had largely fallen into disrepair until it was repaired under the oversight of George Gilbert Scott.

[7] East Winch airfield was founded in 1986 by Colin and Peter Burman, initially for crop dusting.

The village's national constituency is North West Norfolk which has been represented by the Conservative's James Wild MP since 2010.