Horton has a place of worship, anciently called a chapelry or chapel of ease.

It derives from Old English horu 'dirt' and tūn 'settlement, farm, estate', presumably meaning 'farm on muddy soil'.

[4] In the west of the parish in the Little Painley area, on high ground near the River Ribble, is the site of a Bronze Age Bowl barrow.

[5] Horton was once a township in the ancient parish of Gisburn, in the Staincliffe Wapentake of the West Riding of Yorkshire.

This became a civil parish in 1866, forming part of the Bowland Rural District from 1894 to 1974.