Place:Ashchurch, Gloucestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Family History Library Catalog

Ashchurch is a village and former civil parish now in the Tewkesbury District of Gloucestershire, England. The parish was originally called Eastchurch, due to its position east of the parish and town of Tewkesbury. It had a population of 6,064 at the 2001 UK census.

The former Ashchurch Parish covered the village of Ashchurch, the large Northway estate, and the settlements of Aston Cross, Aston on Carrant, Pamington and Natton. The village and housing and industrial estates run directly into Tewkesbury itself. The parish once extended even further west to include the area called Newtown, but this was transferred to Tewkesbury in 1931. From 1935 until 1 Apr 1974, Ashchurch was part of the Cheltenham Rural District, which was then was incorporated into the new Tewkesbury District.

Ashchurch parish ceased to exist on 1 Apr 2008 when the boundaries were changed again; Northway, the principal development in the parish, broke away and formed a new parish of its own, while the remainder was combined with part of the small parish of Walton Cardiff to form the parish of Ashchurch Rural.

For a description of the new parish of Northway, see [1] in Wikipedia.

Ashchurch in the 19th century

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Ashchurch from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"ASHCHURCH, a parish in Tewkesbury [registration] district, Gloucester; on the Bristol and Birmingham railway, at the junction of the Tewkesbury branch, 2 miles E of Tewkesbury. It has a station on the railway; it includes the tythings of Pamington, Fiddington and Natton, Aston-on-Carron, and Northway and Newton; and its Post Town is Tewkesbury. Acres: 4,201. Real property: £11,801. Population: 771. Houses: 159. The property is much subdivided. There is a mineral spring of similar quality to the waters of Cheltenham. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value: £270. Patron: Rev. N. Williams. The church is later English, with a Norman porch and a pinnacled tower. There are a Wesleyan chapel, a national school, and charities £26. The junction of the Tewkesbury branch railway is at Ashchurch; and a railway from [Ashchurch] to Evesham was formed under an act of 1862."

Research Tips

• Gloucestershire Archives in Gloucester is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for this part of Gloucestershire are stored.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• Ashchurch in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 8/Tewkesbury hundred in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online
• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
• The following three large-scale maps are from the Ordnance Survey of 1894 and found in British History Online:

OS Map name 012/NE: Aston on Carrant, Conderton, Kemerton, Kinsham, Overbury, Westmancote

OS Map name 012/SW: Ashchurch, Northway, Priors Park, Tewkesbury, The Mythe, Walton Cardiff

OS Map name 012/SE: Aston Cross, Oxenton, Pamington, Teddington