The Village

History of Ashwell 

By David Short adapted from Snippets of Ashwell's History- Volume 1

The town of Ashwell, later a village, came into existence sometime early in the tenth century probably around 920AD. People had lived in the area since the Neolithic period leaving behind evidence in the landscape and artefacts. Ashwell Village Museum has objects from all periods from the early times to the present day.

A Late Neolithic (2700-2000BC) henge, a ceremonial meeting place, was excavated to the south-east of the village and is the earliest construction found in the parish so far. Aerial photographs show evidence of many Bronze Age burial barrows. Arbury Banks, the Iron Age hillfort, lies to the south-west of the village. It is unlikely to have been permanently occupied and a settlement has been found in the area between the village and Ashwell End behind Buttway Cottages.

Once the Romans had settled in Britain in the first century AD, fortifications like Arbury Banks were not needed and the site was largely abandoned. It appears that what is now the Parish of Ashwell became a farming community based on the Roman town where Baldock is today. One such farm was on the south side of Partridge Hill and another at Ashwell End. During this period there was a religious shrine to the goddess Senuna also at Ashwell End. She has, to date, not been identified in any other parts of the Roman Empire and is, as such, unique. The shrine, when excavated, produced gold and silver plaques dedicated to Senuna. These can be seen in the British Museum and replicas of some of them in Ashwell Museum. Close by there would have been the facilities to accommodate pilgrims visiting the shrine but to date nothing has been identified.

After the fall of the Roman Empire Ashwell became the centre of an Anglo-Saxon estate with an important minster church. There may have been a few house and other buildings near the church, not the present day structure, but no nucleated settlement until the tenth century.

The creation of present-day Ashwell was probably in the early tenth century when Edward the Elder, the king of Wessex, took his armies north and east into Danelaw, the kingdom to the north of Wessex, and slowly overran the kingdom and absorbed it into his own. Around 920 Edward created the borough of Ashwell, a planned Anglo-Saxon market town, on the flat land near the springs. This included a marketplace stretching from the Springs, along High Street to Gardiners Lane and then back to the Springs along Swan Street, Hodwell and the footpath from the Lock Up to the Springs. The first written record of Ashwell is in the will of a wealthy local woman, Aethelgifu, who left 20 sheep to Ashwell. The sheep would have been given to the church and this suggests that the church was a minster, a church serving a large area.

By 1086, when doomsday book was compiled for William the Conqueror, Ashwell was the most important settlement within a ten to twenty mile radius. The marketplace would have dominated the town and the wealth created by it, and other commercial and agricultural activity. This caried onto the medieval period and is reflected in the number of existing quality mediaeval buildings, including St Mary's Church, in the present village.

The outbreak of Black Death in 1349/50 would have affected the town, much as it did the whole country, with between a third and half of all citizens dying. The sorrow of the people of Ashwell is reflected in the graffiti on the north wall of the church tower.

In the sixteenth century a number of the vicars were involved with the Reformation with one, George Joye, having to move to the Netherlands to save his life. Another was the father of one of the translators of the King James Bible and another involved in writing the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Puritan vicars in the mid seventeenth century ensured that puritanism was strong in the parish, something reflected in the plainness of the interior of St Mary’s Church.

Ashwell lost some of its prominence in the sixteenth century but continued as a thriving market town into the seventeenth century. It was then that travel by coach rather than by foot became popular and coaching towns such as Baldock and Royston grew in prominence. It was in 1681 that the Merchant Taylors’ Company, a London livery company, opened their school in Mill Street having received a bequest from Henry Colbron. This school carried on in various guises until 1947 when it became a further education centre, library, infant welfare clinic and field studies centre. It was closed in 2002.

By 1799 there was no longer an official market in Ashwell even though the last reference that can be found to a market existing is in 1862. It was during this period that Ashwell must have come to rely strongly on agriculture as a source of income although strawing plaiting did bring some money into people’s pockets.

The nineteenth century saw some changes with the growth of two other industries: brewing and coprolite digging. The coprolites, fossilised animal remains, are rich in phosphate and when treated became the first artificial fertilizer. Digging it out, in North Field, was hard, thirsty work resulting in a number of beer houses springing up in the area of the diggings.  As in most of England the population of the village grew during this period. In 1801 there was 701 people living in the parish a number that had increased to 1576 in 1871. However, the population declined in the 1890s and did not exceed the 1871 total until 1981 went 1612 were recorded in the decennial census. The decline between 1891 and 1901 was caused by the end of the digging of coprolites and the decline in the use of local straw plaiting.

In the twentieth century two breweries closed; Pages in 1919 and Fordham’s in 1966. In the latter part of the twentieth century changes in transport brought a different life into the community; the motor car and rail travel meant that people could live in Ashwell but work elsewhere. These changes also brought traffic speeding through the village and parked cars filling the roads. However the village is a thriving, active community.

If you’re interested in learning more about the extensive history of Ashwell you can do so by reading David’s books available from Ashwell Museum and Rhubarb & Mustard.