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The coal mines have, almost unbelievably, not spoiled Morton, for it still has its old haunts at the top of the hill, with lovely trees, old cottages, the 18th century rectory, and a church with a 15th century tower crowned by battlements and eight pinnacles.
The rest of the church, except for the 13th century north arcade, was rebuilt in 1850. Inside can be found an ancient and massive font, thought to be Saxon, a chancel screen partly of about 1400, and a Jacobean pulpit. The churchyard has a trim array of low 17th and 18th century gravestones unusual for their simple inscriptions of initials and the year. The War Memorial lychgate stands in the shadow of a great sycamore and a fine beech.
While many Derbyshire settlements can boast of a mention in the Domesday Book, Morton can go one better....its recorded history goes back a further eight decades to 1002, for it was in that year that Wulfric Spott, a Mercian attached to the court of King Ethelred, made a will leaving his manor of Morton to Burton Abbey, which he founded.
It is around the church and the pub (The Sitwell Arms) that the antiquity of the village shows. Solid old stone-built houses in the typical Derbyshire vernacular style, blend with a row of modern bungalows in artifical stone to cluster around the church.
Morton has two other pubs in its long main street, bearing the unusual signs of the 'Live and let Live' and the 'Corner Pin'.
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