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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

, now in the 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. The parish is made up o ...

, in the East Suffolk district, in the north of the

English county The counties of England are a type of subdivision of England. Counties have been used as administrative areas in England since Anglo-Saxon times. There are three definitions of county in England: the 48 ceremonial counties used for the purpo ...

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

. It is north-west of

Lowestoft Lowestoft ( ) is a coastal town and civil parish in the East Suffolk (district), East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England.OS Explorer Map OL40: The Broads: (1:25 000) : . As the List of extreme points of the United Kingdom, most easterly UK se ...

. The estimated population of Ashby was around 50 at the

2011 United Kingdom census A Census in the United Kingdom, 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 Inter ...

. 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 counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

is immediately north of Ashby. Fritton Decoy marks the northern border, with the Norfolk parishes of

Belton with Browston Belton with Browston is a civil parish in the Borough of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England. Historically part of Suffolk, the parish consists of the villages of Belton and Browston Green, and is situated some 5 miles (8 km) south-west o ...

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 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

. 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 conve ...

. 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 Admiral is one of the highest ranks in many navies. In the Commonwealth nations and the United States, a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army or the air force. Admiral is ranked above vice admiral and below admiral of th ...

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, ...

and, from 1863, Francis Crossley. The population of the parish peaked at 110 at the

1881 United Kingdom census The United Kingdom Census of 1881 recorded the people residing in every household on the night of Sunday 3 April 1881, and was the fifth of the Census in the United Kingdom, UK censuses to include details of household members. Data recorded Detail ...

and declined throughout the 20th-century. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

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 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...

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 vehicle, 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 ...

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 organisation in the Scout Movement in the Scouting in the United Kingdom, United Kingdom. Following the rapid development of the Scouting, Scout Movement from 1907, The Scout Association was formed in 1910 ...

. The parish was combined with

Somerleyton Somerleyton ( ) is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Somerleyton, Ashby and Herringfleet, in the East Suffolk (district), East Suffolk district, in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is north-west of Lowestoft ...

and Herringfleet to form the combined parish of

on 1 April 1987.The Waveney (Parishes) Order 1987
,

Local Government Boundary Commission for England The Local Government Boundary Commission for England (LGBCE) is a parliamentary body established by statute to conduct boundary, electoral and structural reviews of local government areas in England. The LGBCE is independent of government and po ...

. Retrieved 2020-01-25.

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 ...

St Mary Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of them mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. ...

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. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start ...

, 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, ...

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, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced t ...

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 Berks ...

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 Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked with prot ...

. 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 S ...

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 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

baptismal font A baptismal font is an Church architecture, ecclesiastical architectural element, which serves as a receptacle for baptismal water used for baptism, as a part of Christian initiation for both rites of Infant baptism, infant and Believer's bapti ...

, 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 (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

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 is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

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