Hempstead is a village and civil parish in the north of the English county of Norfolk. The village is 2.7 miles south-southeast of the town of Holt, and 11.2 miles west of Cromer. Hempstead is within the area covered by North Norfolk District Council. In the last Census, carried out in 2001, the population of Hempstead was counted as 179, the population slightly reducing to 177 at the 2011 Census. In the fifteenth century the Stapleton family held the manor of Hempstead. It passed by marriage to the Calthorpe family, who remained there until the 1570s.