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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
