I love Ashwell. I love it because it is a successful blend of old and new, of tradition and experimentation. This village has adapted well throughout the centuries, from its early days as a prosperous market town, to become a well-balanced and lively community. It is self-sufficient in all the essentials of life.

Ashwell’s position offers the advantages of rich arable and pasture land to the north, combined with the shelter of a chalky outcrop of the Chilterns which dominate it from the south. At the base of the hill bubble out clear springs which form the river Rhee. one of the tributaries of the Cam.

There are traces of Bronze and Iron Age settlements and plenty of Roman remains in the vicinity. The Domesday Book (1086) shows Ashwell as one of the five boroughs in Hertfordshire, with four water mills and two manors which supported about one hundred families. Later it had a weekly market and four annual fairs; strangely Ashwell did not fulfill its early promise and develop into a major town, though the benefits of its layout and its old houses of substance are left.

Agriculture still provides a living for many village households today, but Ashwell has always had something extra to attract population and create wealth. The mills and markets, and latter
straw plaiting for the hat trade, coprolite digging for fertilizer, and brewing with its attendant trades of the cooper, the wheel-wright and the smith, all add up to thirsty work - which might explain the thirty pubs known to have existed at different times in the village.
To explore Ashwell, you must go on foot. I have picked out seven routes, each starting on a different approach road and ending up at Ashwell’s focal point the Church. Please note that no houses are open to the public.

Liz Moynihan