Nocton is a village and civil parish in the North Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It is situated on the B1202 road, 7 miles (11 km) south-east from Lincoln city centre. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 819. To the east of the village is Nocton Fen with its small settlement of Wasps Nest. To the west of the village, situated at the junction of Wellhead Lane and the B1188 road, is Nocton Top Cottages consisting of eight further dwellings. At the south of the village are the remains of Nocton Hall, and 1 mile (2 km) to the east the earthwork remains of Nocton Park Priory.

Historically Nocton fell within the Langoe Wapentake of Kesteven until the wapentakes were abolished by the Local Government Act 1888.

The earliest archaeological evidence of settlement in Nocton Parish are finds of the Neolithic and the Iron Ages. A possible early Neolithic flint core was recovered in 2011 from Nocton Fen from which flint blades had been napped. A Neolithic polished stone axe was discovered close to the future site of Nocton Hall in its grounds opposite Manor Farm, in 1909,

There is some limited evidence of Bronze Age occupation. A negative cropmark indicates the presence of a Bronze Age round barrow approximately 500 metres south of Abbey Hill. Two Deverel-Rimbury urns dating from 1600 – 1100 BC were found locally in 1882, possibly in Nocton Fen.

There is archaeological evidence of Iron Age (800 BC - AD 44) settlement and activity in Nocton that was then in the territory of the Brythonic Celtic tribal federation of the Corieltauvi. Iron Age scored pottery sherds containing animal bones were found both at the Neolithic site and to the south-western edge of the village along the bridleway to Dunston. The Archaeological and Historical Sites Index also records the presence of an Iron Age settlement and rectilinear enclosures to the north-east of the village although Iron Age Britons lived in round houses with conical thatched roofs of straw or heather that left few archaeological remains.

The Romans were present in the area of Nocton although no sizeable occupation has yet been discovered here. Their legacy in Nocton is most strongly visible in the Car Dyke Romano-British canal that runs along the western fen edge from Lincoln to Peterborough linking the River Witham to the River Welland and forming part of an ancient fen drainage system. It is thought to have been constructed by the Romans, possibly around 125 AD. It is the dividing line between the limestone uplands of the west and the fenlands of the east of the parish, the strip between Car Dyke and the River Witham at the eastern extreme of Nocton Parish once being known as the Witham Peat Fen. Two Roman clay coin moulds were found in 1811 in the bed of Car Dyke at the north end of Nocton Wood, close to Wasps Nest. The moulds are identified as belonging to Constantine the Great (AD307–337) and his mother Helena and copies of copper alloy folles, now located at the British Museum. Other archaeological discoveries in Nocton include a beehive quern-stone, the site of a Roman settlement and cropmark and a Roman coin hoard.

A Roman road or track was thought to run South-North through Nocton. Its conjectured course starts in Metheringham and follows the course of Dunston Road to Dunston before continuing to Nocton and aligning with the western boundary of Nocton Hall's garden, then aligning with Potterhanworth Road.

The Anglo-Saxon era began in the fifth century with evidence of settlement in Lincolnshire dating from as early as 450. However it is considered that the area around Lincoln continued to be culturally and/or politically dominated by its former Romano-British inhabitants with their culture and institutions only gradually declining through the fifth century with the label 'Anglo-Saxon' potentially becoming more generally appropriate towards the end of the sixth century. Dr Caitlin Green proposes that the former Romano-Britons of Lincoln continued to control a large area around the city into at least the early sixth century which would likely have included the area of Nocton.