Gayton is a rural village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England, 5 miles (8 km) south-west of Northampton town centre.

[3] Sited near Watling Street, the ancient way from the ports of Kent to Wroxeter, Gayton was not recorded in the Domesday Book survey of 1086 but was probably the unnamed settlement in the Hundred of Towcester held by the knight Sigar of Chocques, who came from the village of that name near Béthune in the north of France.

In 1248 Robert sold Gayton to Ingram of Fiennes, who in 1270 passed it to Michael of Northampton, a cleric.

Juliana murdered her husband in 1316 with the assistance of family servants, and later married one, John de Veaux.

The facts of this tale have become somewhat confused over the centuries but the de Gayton tombs are in the village church.

[6] Another version is that Scholastica murdered her husband and her sister Julianna was burnt as a witch.

This Sir Francis was the son of Clement Tanfield and his wife, Anne, of Gayton.

He was knighted in July 1603 and, in September, accompanied the new ambassador, Lord Spencer, to the court of the Duke of Württemberg, now part of southern Germany.

For the most part these tramways led to a standard gauge branch railway which ran from north east of the Gayton-Blisworth road to the main line with a junction facing Nether Heyford.

At Gayton Junction there is a marina and an arm of the GUC goes down to Northampton through a long flight of locks at Rothersthorpe.

The site of a Roman building, which may have been a temple, is about 800 yards south-east[clarification needed] of the village and was excavated in 1840 revealing a bronze statue and 4th-century coins.