A grammar school was founded in Normanton by John Freeston (now the 'Parish Rooms'..later moved to the site of the, Normanton Junior School on Church Lane) in 1592, but the town remained very small until it became the focus of several railway lines in the mid-19th century. Work began in 1837 under the supervision of George Stephenson on the construction of the North Midland Railway from Derby to Leeds. This was soon followed by an addition to the York and North Midland Railway from York and then the Manchester and Leeds Railway from Manchester which all extended to Normanton thereby giving the town access to much of the country. The Leeds and Manchester lines crossed a stretch across the Pennines and at the time had the world's longest railway station platform at Normanton, a quarter of a mile long. The station was, for the next ten years or so, the most important in England, employing over 700 people who looked after the station's 700,000 passengers a year.