Normandy, United Kingdom

The derivation of the name is uncertain. The village has no direct connection with the Duchy of Normandy, and it is not mentioned in Domesday Book. The Surrey volume of the English Place-Name Society, published in 1934, suggests that the name was taken from the public house called "The Duke of Normandy", and this remains a popular interpretation. However, the pub was built in the 1860s, and is not known to have replaced an earlier building, so it is more likely that it was named after the village rather than the other way around. It has also been suggested that the monks of Waverley Abbey named the village after their homeland in northern France because of a similarity in the local landscapes – but the abbey's landholdings did not extend as far as the village of Normandy. A third speculative theory offered by local historians is that Normandy Common may be the common referred to in the Cleygate records as a part of the manor in the north and west, "lately called Noebodies Common", because it lay on the boundary of two manors: as such, it might also have been referred to as "No Man's Land", which might eventually have been corrupted to "Normandy".

There is evidence on the parishes eastern border of Romano-British occupation in the form of temple remains. In late Saxon England the lands were within the holdings of Earl Godwin, father of King Harold Godwinson. Later, the Domesday Book in its account of the manor of Henley (now represented only by the Henley Park manor house) records that the manor covered large parts of what is now Normandy, as well as Ash; Normandy though was not mentioned by name, the name not being known in the records until 1604. The lands remained within the ancient manor of Henley until the end of the 14th century. At this time the manor of Cleygate began to be carved out of the manor of Henley. As a manor, Cleygate is first mentioned when Henry VI granted the manor to his uterine brother, Jasper the Earl of Pembroke. After Jasper was attainted by Edward IV his lands were forfeited, but were passed back to him in 1485 when his attainder was reversed. After that, the Manor passed through a number of hands, reverting to the crown on more than one occasion.

By the time the final part of the Manor of Cleygate was sold to the War Department in 1876, most of the Manor had been sold to private individuals, and that included much of what is now the parish of Normandy. The three private estates making up the parish were those of Henley Park, Westwood and Normandy Park. Normandy Farm was the final home of the early 19th century radical reformer and agrarian William Cobbett, the author of Rural Rides.

Into the twentieth century Normandy retained its agricultural base. The locality of Normandy was considered for the site of a "New Town" to be called "New Norman" in the 1943 Town and Country Plan produced by the Surrey Federation of Labour Parties. However, this did not come to pass and the village into the twenty-first century remains protected within London's green belt.

On 3 August 2007 the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) confirmed that cattle on farmland within the parish were found to be infected with foot-and-mouth disease. This was the first outbreak of its kind in the UK for six years.