Aston le Walls, Northamptonshire
Historical Description
Aston-le-Walls, a village and a parish in the county of Northampton, on the verge of the county, on the Roman road to Dorchester, near the Oxford Canal, 4 miles NE of Cropredy station on the G.W.R., and 8 NNE of Banbury. It includes the hamlet of Appletree, and its post town is Byfield (R.S.O.), which is the money order and telegraph office. Acreage 1053; population, 117. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Peterborough; gross value, £375. Patron, St John's College, Oxford. The church is of the 13th century. The Roman Catholics also have a chapel and a school.
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 | Aston-Le-Walls St. Leonard | |
Hundred | Chipping-Warden | |
Poor Law union | Banbury |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register of baptisms and burials dates from the year 1540; marriages, 1558.
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. Leonard (parish church)
The church of St. Leonard, erected in 1240, is a building of stone, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, south and west porches and an embattled western tower, which was partly rebuilt and thoroughly restored in 1909 at a cost of nearly £1,000, and the three bells rehung and the clock replaced: the tower was restored in 1910 at a cost of £330: the chancel retains a double piscina, and on the north side, under a plain arch and resting on a raised slab, is the recumbent stone effigy of an ecclesiastic fully vested, with his hands raised and his head on a cushion: in the nave are brasses to the Butler family, including effigies of Alban Butler, ob. 1609, his two wives, Sybilla (Rawlegh) and Isabella (Odingesalls), and fourteen children; to Alban Butler esq. ob. 1617; and George Butler esq. 1685; these brasses have been cleaned and placed on the wall of the north aisle; here also is a marble monument with the bust of a female, and the arms and crest of the Orme family, to a daughter of Thomas Orme, of Hanch Hall, Lichfield, ob. 1692: the font is Norman: in the west end of the south aisle floor is the coffin top or tombstone of Joan, baroness of Dudley, wife of John de Sutton, 3rd baron of Dudley: the south aisle and porch were rebuilt in 1875: the chancel was restored in 1877, at a cost of over £400, defrayed by the patrons and the late Lord Overstone, and in 1881-2 it was new roofed, refitted with oak choir stalls and a stone reredos erected; new desks, pulpit and lectern were also introduced, the nave entirely re-seated, a new organ placed and various repairs effected, under the direction of Mr. J. M. Townsend, architect, of Peterborough, the total cost amounting to £1,500, of which £1,233 was furnished by the sister of the Rev. Henry Thorpe M.A., rector 1831-86, and £167 by the patrons of the living; there are 100 sittings.
Roman Catholic
Sacred Heart
There is a Catholic church, dedicated to the Sacred Heart, with school; the church was built and endowed by Edmund Plowden esq. and opened in 1827; it was restored in 1912.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Aston le Walls from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Aston-Le-Walls (St. Leonard))
- Kelly's Directory of Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Northamptonshire, 1914
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Northamptonshire is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Aston le Walls 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: