Salton is mentioned in the
Domesday Book as belonging to the then
Archbishop of York and having four villagers and five ploughlands. The name of the village derives from the
Old English words of
Salh, meaning a willow or sallow and
tūn, which means an enclosure or farmstead. During the 12th century, the
Norman St John of Beverley's Church, was set alight with the villagers inside by marauding
Scots. The church, which had its last major renovation in 1881, was restored again in 2019 with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Funding. The church has been described as being a "near perfect example of
Norman architecture", and is now a
grade I listed building. The population of the village in 2011 was 110, but for the purposes of census information, the data was included in the parish of Edstone.
North Yorkshire County Council estimated the population of the parish to be 100 people in 2015. ==Geography==