There is evidence of settlement in the Heacham area over the last 5,000 years, with numerous Neolithic and later Bronze Age finds within the parish.

This is presumably because the local geology consists of primarily cretaceous sands and underlying chalk, meaning that there is very little surface water for miles in any direction.

Running water along with fertile surrounding lands made Heacham an ideal place for settlement by early man.

Before the Norman Conquest, Heacham was held by two Saxons, Alnoth, and Toki the king's thegn, whose estates centred around a hall in Castle Acre.

In the same place William de Warenne holds 2 carucates of land which Alnoth, a free man, held TRE.

[7] In 1085 Heacham manor was given by William de Warenne to a cell of Cluniac monks from the Priory of St Pancras of Lewes, to pray for the soul of his late wife Gundreda.

In 1272 Heacham was granted by royal charter a weekly market on Wednesdays and 3 days[8] during the mid-August Fairs on 14, 15 and 16 August.

Even in the baking sector where men had a large share in the production of bread, women dominated the market by their numbers.

Between 1276 and 1324, around the time of the great European famine, the Leet Court sessions listed many women selling ale or bread who were not able to pay the licensing tax and were declared by the aletasters and the steward presiding the court condonatae causa paupertatis (pardoned for the sake of poverty).

The Heacham demesne accounts mentions its horse-drawn carts often transporting a harvest surplus as far as Fakenham.

The ships that enabled this trade would be Cogs, flat bottomed boats widely used from the North Sea to the Baltic.

Heacham has historic ties to Matoaka (better known as Pocahontas), who married John Rolfe on 5 April 1614 at a church in Jamestown, Virginia.

Rolfe took his wife, Rebecca (Pocahontas), and their two-year-old son, Thomas, to visit his family at Heacham Hall in 1616, but settled in Brentford.

Heacham became popular as a seaside resort with the Victorians, when the railway between King's Lynn and Hunstanton opened in the early 1860s.

In early 2013, an exhibition of the North Sea Flood was held at St Mary's Church, with contributions from Heacham's infant and junior schools and from other villagers.

Linn Chilvers supplied the plants and the labour and Francis Dusgate of Fring Hall the land.