The civil parish is believed to have been inhabited since the 8th or 9th century. Acton appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, when it was one of the wealthiest townships in the Nantwich Hundred, being valued for the same sum as Nantwich. The name means "oak town", referring to the pedunculate oaks that predominated in the adjacent Forest of Mondrem. During the Civil War, the village was taken by siege several times. The Shropshire Union Canal reached the parish in 1835, using a long embankment to avoid Dorfold Park. The parish contains many historic buildings, including two listed at grade I: Dorfold Hall was considered by Nikolaus Pevsner to be one of the two finest Jacobean houses in Cheshire, while St Mary's Church has a tower dating from the 13th century, one of the earliest in the county.