Ashby, Norfolk

Ashby is the site of a deserted mediæval village in Norfolk, amongst the Norfolk Broads three miles north of Acle and nine miles north-west of Great Yarmouth. Beside it is another lost village, Oby (the two together forming a parish known as 'Ashby with Oby' with no village nor hamlet within it ,and a population of less than 100 at the 2011 census).

The River Bure forms the western boundary of the parish. Nearby villages include Thurne to the north-west, Repps and Bastwick to the north, Rollesby to the north-east and Clippesby to the east.

History

A group of eight ring ditches in the north of the parish have been interpreted as a ploughed-out Bronze Age round barrow cemetery. Back then, the area was part of an island -the Isle of Flegg, which was surrounded by shallow sea and salt marsh.

Cropmarks indicating a possible Roman farmstead were identified in 2007, and metal detecting has recovered Roman coins on the site which is next to the old salt marsh boundary.

Ashby was a substantial Anglo-Saxon village, which is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Ascheby, in the West Flegg Hundred. Ashby was a large village for the time, with 23.8 households. Its overlord was St Benet's Abbey just up the river, and one of the tenants-in-chief was the Bishop of Norfolk, still based in Thetford in 1086.

Walter Suffield, bishop of Norwich (died 1257) gave permission for the Lord of the Manor of Ashby, William de Sparham, to have a private chapel in his own house with its own priest. This was the present Ashby Hall, although nothing mediæval survives there. The village was located between this and the church, which was on Thurne Road to the south-east.

Ashby and Oby were both deserted in unknown circumstances in the later Middle Ages. In 1604, the parishes of Ashby, Oby and Thurne were united into one ecclesiastical parish. However the church at Ashby remained in use as a chapel of ease, with its graveyard, and confusion later arose about which of the two churches had been which.

Ashby church was intact in around 1740, when the Norfolk antiquarian Francis Blomefield visited and left a brief description which he had published in 1810. In 1790, there was a land transaction which involved the churchyard being given into secular ownership, William Faden published a map of Norfolk in 1797, which also indicated that the church was out of use by then. In 1854, ruins were still visible. In 1882 there was an archaeological excavation, by which time only a portion of churchyard wall left above ground. The site subsequently became a ploughed field. It is unusual for a Norfolk church extant in the 18th century to vanish completely in this way, indicating that a predatory landlord was involved.

In 1820, the consolidated parish of Thurne with Ashby and Oby was subject to Enclosure. An ancient area of common land attached to Asbby was lost, and the poor people of the township were compensated with the income from three acres which was fetching £6 in the 1850s (£600 in 2021 values). The vanished common is remembered by Heath Farm and Heath Road.

Location

• Location map: 52°41’9"N, 1°34’40"E
• Streetmap: {{map|TG419158}