Asterleigh

Asterleigh

Asterleigh

Human settlement in England

Asterleigh, sometimes in the past called Esterley,[1] is a farm and deserted medieval village about 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Charlbury in Oxfordshire. The site of the former village is about 0.25 miles (400 m) west of the present farm.[2]

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Manor

Asterleigh's toponym indicates that it was created by woodland clearance[3] on what would then have been the edge of Wychwood Forest.

The Domesday Book of 1086 does not record Asterleigh as a separate settlement. Medieval pottery found in 1948 suggests that Asterleigh was inhabited by the 12th century.[2] Also in 1948, squared stones were found along with limestone roofing slates that had medieval-style drilled nail-holes.[2]

The earliest known documentary record of Asterleigh is from early in the 13th century.[2] At the time of the Hundred Rolls in 1279 it had 20 farms.[3] However, the village declined and its landowning family decided to leave the village and move to Nether Kiddington.[3]

Church

Asterleigh was an ecclesiastical parish that had its own parish church by 1216.[1] However, in 1466 John Chedworth, Bishop of Lincoln absorbed Asterleigh into the ecclesiastical parish of Kiddington, declaring:

the tenths, oblations, rents and emoluments of the rectory of Asterleigh were so diminished as to be insufficient to support a rector, or even a competent parochial chaplain, on account of the paucity of parishioners, the barrenness of land, defects of husbandry, and an unusual prevalence of pestilences and epidemic sicknesses.[3]

In 1783 the Reverend Thomas Warton reported that "pieces of moulded stone and other antique masonry" had been found at Asterleigh.[4] In 1960 the footings of the church porch were unearthed and reburied.[5]

Farm and civil parish

By the 18th century Asterleigh was no more than a farmhouse.[6] Asterleigh Farm was an extra-parochial area of 300 acres (120 ha) until 1858[7] when it was made a civil parish.[8] In 1895 it was combined with the civil parish of Kiddington.[8]

The site of the medieval village and church is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.[9]

References

  1. [1]
    Page, 1907
  2. [2]
    Jope, 1948, pages 67-69
  3. [3]
    Emery, 1974, page 102
  4. [4]
    Warton, 1783, cited in Jope, 1948, pages 67-69
  5. [5]
    Case & Sturdy, 1960, page 131
  6. [6]
    Warton, 1815, page 23
  7. [7]
    Vision of Britain website: Asterleigh
  8. [8]
    Vision of Britain website: Kiddington
  9. [9]
    West Oxfordshire District Council: Scheduled Ancient Monuments Archived September 2, 2011, at the Wayback Machine

Sources

  • Case, Humphrey; Sturdy, David (1960). "Recent Mediaeval Finds in the Oxford Region". Oxoniensia. XXV. Oxford Architectural and Historical Society: 131.
  • Emery, Frank (1974). The Oxfordshire Landscape. The Making of the English Landscape. London: Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 101–102. ISBN 0-340-04301-6.
  • Jope, E.M. (1948). "Recent Mediaeval Finds in the Oxford Region". Oxoniensia. XIII. Oxford Architectural and Historical Society: 67–69.
  • Page, W.H., ed. (1907). A History of the County of Oxford, Volume 2. Victoria County History. Archibald Constable & Co. pp. 1–63.
  • Warton, Thomas (1783). The History and Antiquities of Kiddington (2nd ed.). pp. 17–21.
  • Warton, Thomas (1815). The History and Antiquities of Kiddington (3rd ed.). London: J. Nichols, Son & Bentley. p. 23.
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