Two oxgangs of land in Walton belonged to King Edward the Confessor in 1066, and after the Norman conquest, was the demesne of Roger de Busli and Albert Grelley.

In 1644 Royalists were captured by Parliamentarians and Walton was the principal scene of the first Battle of Preston, fought on 17 August 1648 between Cromwell and the Duke of Hamilton.

[2] In 1715, during the second Battle of Preston, the bridge over the River Ribble was successfully defended against the Jacobites by Parson Wood and his parishioners of Chowbent.

[2] In 1701 the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Derwentwater and other Jacobites incorporated the town by the style of the "mayor and corporation of the ancient borough of Walton.

In 1701 some of the local gentry including the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Derwentwater and other Jacobites formed the Mock Borough of Walton, a social club, which lasted for about 50 years, and met in the Unicorn Inn, near Darwen Bridge.

[4] The mock corporation had officers which included a mayor, his deputy, recorder, bailiff, chaplain, serjeant, physician and mace-bearer but which also appointed a house-groper, jester, poet laureate, master of the hounds, sword-bearer, in 1708 a slut-kisser and in 1711 a custard-eater.

[2] At midnight on 12 August 1560, under the moonlight in St Leonard's Churchyard, occultist and scholar John Dee allegedly summoned the spirit of a man who had died before giving the whereabouts of a considerable amount of money.