Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire
Historical Description
Castle-Ashby, a village and a parish in Northamptonshire, 2 miles S from Castle-Ashby and Earl's Barton station on the L. & N.W.R., and 8 E by S from Northampton, under which it has a post, money order, and telegraph office. It includes the hamlet of Chadstone. Area of the parish, 1978 acres; population, 199. The Castle is a seat of the Comptons, Marquises of Northampton. It is a princely mansion, begun in 1583 and completed in 1624, very beautifully situated in park lands comprising 645 acres, and surrounded by terraces, gardens, and pleasure grounds. The Marquess of Northampton is lord of the manor and sole landowner. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peterborough; net yearly value, about £275 with residence, in the gift of the Marquess of Northampton. The church, an edifice of stone chiefly in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, has some very interesting brasses, effigies, and monuments.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Northamptonshire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Castle Ashby St. Mary Magdalene | |
Hundred | Wymmersley | |
Poor Law union | Hardingstone |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The register dates from the year 1564.
Ancestry.co.uk, in association with the Northamptonshire Record Office, have images of the Parish Registers and Bishop's Transcripts for Northamptonshire online.
Churches
Church of England
St. Mary Magdalene (parish church)
The church of St. Mary Magdalene, to the south of the castle, is an edifice of stone, chiefly in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, consisting of chancel, with north chapel, clerestoried nave of three bays, aisles, north and south porches and an embattled western tower containing a clock and 5 bells: the north porch is Late Norman or Transitional work, with dog-tooth ornament, and has a parvise in which, according to a current tradition, an old woman lived so late as 1624: the pulpit of oak is an elaborate work of the Jacobean period: the chancel retains a double piscina with a stone shelf above it, and there is a remarkably fine brass to William Ermyn, rector, ob. 1401, in a cope, the orphreys of which are enriched with the figures of numerous saints under canopies: the inscription and four shields, formerly at each corner of the slab, are lost: the east window of the north chapel is filled with glass painted by Lady Marian Alford, d. 1888: on the floor of the chapel is a recumbent effigy of Purbeck marble, of a knight in chain armour, cross-legged and wearing a long surcoat, said to represent Sir David de Esseby, probably slain at the battle of Evesham, 4 Aug. 1265: there are also several mural tablets to members of the Compton family and others: in the north wall is a recumbent figure of Lady Margaret (Compton), wife of the Hon. Edward Frederick Leveson-Gower M.P. d. 26 May, 1858, and on the west is a marble figure to Spencer Joshua Alwyne, 2nd Marquess of Northampton, d. 17 Jan. 1851, erected by his son Charles, 3rd Marquess, who died March 3, 1877, and to whom two memorial windows were placed in 1880 and 1889: the church was restored in 1870 under the direction of the late Mr. G. E. Street R.A. at a cost of £4,710, chiefly defrayed by Charles, 3rd Marquess of Northampton and the late Rt. Rev. Lord Alwyne Compton D.D. Bishop of Ely, and rector here 1852-79, by whom the organ was also presented: there are 200 sittings. In the churchyard is a cross 20 feet high, in the Gothic style, erected in 1883 as a memorial to Charles, 3rd Marquess of Northampton, and also a marble figure of an angel, erected in 1885 by the late marquess, to Eliza (Elliot), his wife, d. 4 Dec. 1877.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Castle Ashby from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Ashby, Castle (St. Mary Magdalene))
- Kelly's Directory of Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire, 1914
Land and Property
The Castle, the seat of the Marquess of Northampton, is charmingly seated on a broad gravel terrace overlooking the valley of the Nene; it was begun between 1583 and 1589 and completed in 1624; but the screen on the south front was added by Inigo Jones about 60 years later; the whole building forms a quadrangle with two lofty octangular towers at the north-east and south-west angles respectively; the south front, looking down the noble avenue which leads to the deer park, includes a series of extremely rich gates in the Italian style; the castle grounds are laid ont in a series of terraces, with sunk gardens at various levels, connected by flights of steps: attached to the mansion are three undulating parks of much natural beauty, with a total area of 645 acres; their pleasant slopes and irregular undulations, the fine trees and the beautiful ornamental water form an extremely attractive and diversified scene; the house is approached by four entrances, one of which is reached from the Yardley Hastings side through a grand avenue of trees, nearly 4 miles long, commencing at Yardley Chase and intersecting the deer park: the house contains numerous early and other valuable paintings, and the library comprises several literary treasures.
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Northamptonshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Castle Ashby are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Northamptonshire papers online: