The name Hexton derives from a personal name and the Old English word tun giving ‘Heahstan's farm/settlement’. At the time of the Domesday Survey the village name was recorded as Hegestanestone.

The eight hundred year old church of St. Faith’s looks fine form the Barton road but when you look round the back you will find that half the tower has collapsed.

The village prospered under the ministrations of Caroline Young and her French husband Joseph de Lautour, who lived at the manor, until Caroline died in 1869. The village then rapidly decayed until a Yorkshire industrialist, George Hodgson, saw it thirty years later. He spent thousands of pounds restoring and rebuilding, adding a cricket pitch, quoits pitch and even a marbles playing area.