Ashby is a former

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

in the north of the

English county The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

. It is north-west of

Lowestoft Lowestoft ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . As the most easterly UK settlement, it is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and sou ...

in the East Suffolk district. The parish was combined with

Somerleyton Somerleyton is a village and former civil parish in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is north-west of Lowestoft and south-west of Great Yarmouth in the East Suffolk district. The village is closely associated with Somerleyto ...

and

Herringfleet Herringfleet is a place and former civil parish in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is located north-west of Lowestoft in the East Suffolk district. The parish was combined with Somerleyton and Ashby to create the parish of Somer ...

to form the combined parish of

Somerleyton, Ashby and Herringfleet Somerleyton, Ashby and Herringfleet is a civil parish in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is north-west of Lowestoft and the same distance south-west of Great Yarmouth and is in the East Suffolk (district), East Suffolk district. ...

in 1987. The estimated population of Ashby was around 50 at the

2011 United Kingdom census A census of the population of the United Kingdom is taken every ten years. The 2011 census was held in all countries of the UK on 27 March 2011. It was the first UK census which could be completed online via the Internet. The Office for National ...

. There is no village centre, with the population spread across a number of scattered farms and small settlements.Somerleyton, Ashby and Herringfleet
Healthy Suffolk, 2016. Retrieved 2021-03-13. The area has always been sparsely populated, with the former parish population never exceeding 110. At the

1981 United Kingdom census The United Kingdom Census 1981 was a census of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland carried out on 5 April 1981. The census will be released in 2081 or 2082 after 100 years.Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

is immediately north of Ashby.

Fritton Decoy Fritton may refer to the following places in Norfolk, England: * Fritton, Great Yarmouth * Fritton, North Norfolk, a location near Ludham * Fritton (near Morning Thorpe) Morningthorpe (sometimes Morning Thorpe) is a village and former civil ...

marks the northern border, with the Norfolk parishes of Belton with Browston and Fritton and St Olaves bordering Ashby. To the east it borders the Suffolk parish of Lound, with Herringfleet and Somerleyton to the west and south. Much of the land within the area of the former parish is owned by the Somerleyton Estate.Lound with Ashby, Herringfleet and Somerleyton Neighbourhood Plan
Lound Parish Council, 2018. Retrieved 2021-03-14.

History

Ashby is not named in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

. By the 13th-century it was owned by Sir John de Askby and is recorded as having 10 taxpayers in 1327. By the end of the 16th-century the parish was owned by John Wentworth. Wentworth, who also owned a number of surrounding manors, enclosed the parish common in 1599 and the site near the parish church is the location of a possible

deserted medieval village In the United Kingdom, a deserted medieval village (DMV) is a former settlement which was abandoned during the Middle Ages, typically leaving no trace apart from earthworks or cropmarks. If there are fewer than three inhabited houses the convent ...

. Suckling AI (1846) 'Ashby', in ''The History and Antiquities of the County of Suffolk: Volume 1'', pp. 294–301. Ipswich: WS Crowell.
Available online
at British History Online. Retrieved 2021-03-16.) Admiral Sir Thomas Allin purchased the manor in 1672. A series of duck decoys are known to have been operated at Fritton Decoy from around this time. These continued to operate into the 19th century, at which time the estate was owned by railway developer

Samuel Morton Peto Sir Samuel Morton Peto, 1st Baronet (4 August 1809 – 13 November 1889) was an English entrepreneur, civil engineer and railway developer, and, for more than 20 years, a Member of Parliament (MP). A partner in the firm of Grissell and Peto, he ...

and, from 1863, Francis Crossley. The population of the parish peaked at 110 at the 1881 United Kingdom census and declined throughout the 20th-century. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

an American B17 bomber crashed close to the parish church after a signal flare had exploded inside the plane. The crash, which occurred on 7 May 1944, killed five members of the crew. A memorial to these men, as well as two P47 fighter pilots killed in a collision over Fritton Decoy in April 1945, was erected on the edge the churchyard. During the war parts of the parish around Fritton Decoy, were used for training ahead of the

Normandy landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as ...

in 1944. The

79th Armoured Division The 79th Armoured Division was a specialist armoured division of the British Army created during the Second World War. The division was created as part of the preparations for the Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944, D-Day. Major-General Percy ...

used the site for the testing and development of amphibious

DD tank DD or Duplex Drive tanks, nicknamed "Donald Duck tanks", were a type of amphibious swimming tank developed by the British during the Second World War. The phrase is mostly used for the Duplex Drive variant of the M4 Sherman medium tank, that w ...

s between 1943 and 1947. Part of the site is now used as a campsite by the

Scout Association The Scout Association is the largest Scouting organisation in the United Kingdom and is the World Organization of the Scout Movement's recognised member for the United Kingdom. Following the origin of Scouting in 1907, the association was for ...

.Heringfleet
Suffolk Scouts,

. Retrieved 2021-03-16.

Church of St Mary

The

Church of England parish church A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...

St Mary Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of ...

is in an isolated position about down a track, south of the hamlet. The church is built of local

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

, with a small amount of red brick for

quoin Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia, t ...

s and repairs with stonework dating from the 13th century, although it is believed that there may have been a church on the site during the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

period.Ashby St Mary's, Suffolk
''The Round Tower'', pp.3–6. vol.37, no.2, December 2009, The Round Tower Churches Society. Retrieved 2021-03-16. The roof of the nave and chancel is

thatched Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

. It is one of around 40

round-tower church Round-tower churches are a type of church found mainly in England, mostly in East Anglia; of about 185 surviving examples in the country, 124 are in Norfolk, 38 in Suffolk, six in Essex, three in Sussex and two each in Cambridgeshire and Berkshi ...

es in Suffolk.Church of St Mary
List entry,

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked wit ...

. Retrieved 2021-03-16. The oldest part of the building is the

Purbeck Marble Purbeck Marble is a fossiliferous limestone found in the Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula in south-east Dorset, England. It is a variety of Purbeck stone that has been quarried since at least Roman times as a decorative building stone. Geology Strat ...

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

baptismal font A baptismal font is an article of church furniture used for baptism. Aspersion and affusion fonts The fonts of many Christian denominations are for baptisms using a non-immersive method, such as aspersion (sprinkling) or affusion (pouring). ...

, which is 12th- or 13th-century. The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

of the church are 13th-century. The tower has a round base and is octagonal from about above ground level. It was probably rebuilt early in the 16th century. The church is a

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

Notes

References

External links

ASH Villages
Somerleyton, Ashby and Herringfleet parish council website {{authority control Villages in Suffolk Former civil parishes in Suffolk Waveney District