Looking back more than 2000 years ago this wooded and marshy valley contained Iron Age and Romano-British settlements and later, Anglo-Saxon 'grubenhauser' and cemeteries, recently discovered in the valley.
Go back to the great Domesday Survey of 1086, which shows the valley surrounded by a ring of villages above flood level, some, like Edith Weston and Normanton, not individually mentioned but probably included as outliers of the Royal Manor of Hambleton. Consider the medieval expansion of these villages and their open fields as more land was taken from the waste. The building of great churches often financed by wool merchants and sheep farmers pasturing their flocks on the rich limestone slopes above the valley.

From the Norman Conquest a series of great families emerged such as the Normanvilles, Tankervilles, Ferrers and de Gand, eventually producing a landed aristocracy with famous names like Villiers, Mackworth, Noel, Harrington and Finch - all to have a lasting influence on life and landscape in the area. Such great men required great houses and estates.

A distinguished house and park was created at Normanton between 1729 and 1829 which, eventually, by succession, became the seat of the Earls of Ancaster, until, in 1924-25, the bulk of the estate was sold, split-up and the hall demolished. The quiet valley might have continued as fertile farmland, largely unnoticed, but in 1970 Royal Assent was given for the construction of a large reservoir in the valley.

Population expansion and industrial growth in regional towns such as Peterborough, Corby and Northampton had produced a demand for more water. So it came about that this secluded valley was swept clean of trees, hedges, cottages, farms and other rural remnants and, after much earth-moving turned into one of England largest man-made lakes, almost the size of Windermere.

However, due to great voluntary effort, Normanton Church was saved, almost as a memorial to the past. So it exists as the reminder of a village depopulated to make a park in 1764, long before the reservoir. Now the village foundations lie beneath the waves. Above the church, now called Normanton Tower, in the trees on higher ground, you can still find traces of the old Hall, including stables and clock tower. Normanton shows us the whole panoramic history of the landscape in just a few acres of Rutland soil and Rutland Water.