The settlement of Marton has two recorded phases of extreme decline in a profile of size and population that otherwise finds it generally larger than average in the area. It is recorded as being waste land of low value in Domesday book in 1086 and this may well reflect its vulnerable position on the main Lincoln to York land route as well as its border location. In the early 15th century it had fewer than 10 households. Recovery from this may have given rise to a fundamental change of orientation in its plan. For where it now principally forms a two row street village along the north-south through road, there are signs in the patterns of properties, scraps of earthworks and a stub of a street to the east of the main road that the earlier axis was, like several of these Trentside settlements south of Gainsborough, an east-west main street leading to the river side. {1} The medieval village location owes much to its relationship to the River Trent rather than the old Roman road of Till Bridge Lane. The early waterside focus was not so much on the bank of the Trent but rather on a former wide shallow inlet on the east bank of the Trent that lay to the south of Marton between Marton village and Torksey. This would have been a stretch of water several hundred metres wide with a broad, gently sloping beach on its north side beside Marton village. This sheltered beach would have been ideal for stranding boats and thus will have allowed the land adjacent to the beach to develop as a market during the later Anglo-Saxon period. This market may have acted as the original stimulus for the development of Marton medieval settlement. {2} The place-name Marton comes from the Old English 'mere-tun' meaning 'pool farm', arguably derived from its position on the Trent flood plain. {3}