As multicolored fireworks explode and a perfect arc of light forms in the sky before disappearing, a shooting star flies around Sleeping Beauty’s castle to When You Wish Upon a Star.

In every Disney movie since 2006, the title sequence pays tribute to a Lincolnshire village of 242 – whether it is the live action Little Mermaid or the most recent animated release Elemental.

As part of my research, I met Disney historian Sebastien Durand at St Peter’s Church in Norton Disney, Lincolnshire, an 11th-century building.

The French Disney expert explains, gazing up at Norman pillars and arches, that this is the oldest place in England where you can find traces of Disney, of Walt Disney’s history and family tree.

Walt Disney himself visited this church on 7 July 1949. He had just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the company he founded with his brother Roy at that point in his career. Fantasia and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were among Walt’s Oscar-winning films.

When his daughters, Diane and Sharon, convinced him and his wife Lillian to spend a few days in Scotland that summer, he was in the UK supervising the filming of a live-action Treasure Island. As long as they could take a detour on the way, he agreed.

A village named after Disney was mentioned to him, Durand says. “He was intrigued since he only knew that his great-grandfather was Irish. He didn’t know his history before then.”