The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'farm by a slippery place'. It is a common place name (see Slapton). This village was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Slapetone.
The manor in Slapton once belonged to a convent in Barking, Essex, though it was seized by the Crown in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1547. The manor was, for some time after that, property of the Earl of Bridgwater.