Asterley is a village in

Shropshire Shropshire (; alternatively Salop; abbreviated in print only as Shrops; demonym Salopian ) is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It is bordered by Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire to th ...

, England. Its name, derived from

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

, means "the eastern clearing in the forest".Raven, M. ''A Guide to Shropshire'', 2005, p.16 It was historically a

township A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, Ca ...

of the large parish of

Pontesbury Pontesbury is a village and civil parish in Shropshire and is approximately eight miles southwest of Shrewsbury. In the 2011 census, the village had a population of 1,873 and the parish had a population of 3,227. The village of Minsterley is ju ...

,Pontesbury
,

GENUKI GENUKI is a genealogy web portal, run as a charitable trust. It "provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland". It gives access to a large collection of information, with the emphas ...

and is still part of the

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 ...

of Pontesbury. It consists of some 50 houses, including some timber- and cruck-framed dwellings. There are four farms operating within the village and an equestrian estate. There is a brick former

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

mission church in the village, built in 1869 but a private house since about 1990,. Its churchyard contains the graves of two

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 ...

soldiers who both died in 1940, which are registered and maintained by the

Commonwealth War Graves Commission The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations mil ...

.
CWGC Cemetery Report. Dates obtained from casualty record. There is a functioning Methodist chapel which is part of the Shropshire and Marches Methodist Circuit. Eight of the Methodist churches in the area voted on 15 July 2019 to become an amalgamation of chapels to be called Rea Valley Methodist Churches keeping each chapel operational as a cooperative. In this new Methodist Society, Asterley will become a Celebration Chapel and offer special worship services four to five times a year. The chapel was built in 1834. A stone

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

memorial tablet is next to its entrance door outside and indoors is a framed Roll of Honour to local men who died in World War II. The village had a small and possibly shortlived

Latter Day Saints The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movement, LDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement) is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian Restorationist movement founded by Jo ...

congregation in 1851.Reprinted extract from Victoria History of Shropshire, Volume VIII, published 1968. The village has had two pubs, The Royal Oak and The Windmill Inn, a shop and a school house which are all now private houses. In the 18th and 19th centuries the village was the centre of a small-scale

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

and brick-making industry. It has a long established connection with farming with many established farmhouses being present in the village an immediate surroundings. In 1944, a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter crashed in what was a deep pond which was originally a marl pit. The pilot survived by jumping by parachute from the stricken aircraft. The aircraft remains buried in the now dried out and filled in pond. Outside the village is a rare survival, a

windmill A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called windmill sail, sails or blades, specifically to mill (grinding), mill grain (gristmills), but the term is also extended to windpumps, wind turbines, and ...

built in 1809.Asterley
National Mills Weekend It was restored in the 1980s.

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Villages in Shropshire {{Shropshire-geo-stub

See also

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External links