Population - Ashford Hill with Headley has a population of 1,216
The Parish of Ashford Hill with Headley in North Hampshire is a small, peaceful, mostly rural area bounded by the larger settlements of Reading, Basingstoke and Newbury. It lies close to the prosperous M4, M3 and A34 corridors and has become a commutable location for the dynamic central south England commercial region and the capital. Despite this proximity, until the late C20th the two major settlements saw very limited change of built environment compared to neighbouring parishes. That has preserved a charm and attractiveness as a place to live. The parish was renamed in 1987 to reflect the 2 major village settlements, but it remains a beautiful, rural and environmentally significant parish of several villages within the Basingstoke and Deane Borough, flanking the northern boundary of Hampshire with Berkshire along the River Enborne.
The parish of AH&H has geographical and historical significance. Since Saxon times, and until it gained its separate identity in 1841 as the Parish of Kingsclere Woodlands, the area had been the northern part of the Parish of Kingsclere (originally known in medieval times as Clere, later Clere Regis).
Part of the hinterland and trade routes of Roman Silchester, the area around Kingsclere became regally connected, awarded by the Saxon King Alfred of Wessex to a daughter as a dowry in the C10th thence into the possession of the family of Earl Harold Godwin until his short Saxon reign was ended by the Norman conquest. The parish was included in land forfeit to the new Norman dynasty and court, large landholdings controlled by the De Port family locally (later part of the Bolton estate of Yorkshire), and holdings also endowed to colleges of Oxford University.
In 1841 a separate parish of the northern Kingsclere settlements was formed in its own right. The assigned name of Kingsclere Woodlands reflected the heavily wooded nature of the area before the forest clearances of the C17th and early C18th. That ecclesiastical parish name survived until 1987 when with no change of boundary it became Ashford Hill with Headley Parish. Since that time the designation has served both the local government (within Basingstoke & Deane) and ecclesiastical structure. In 2006 the ecclesiastical parish reverted to a shared benefice with Kingsclere.
Kingsclere Woodlands (1841-1987) whose population peaked in the 1850’s consisted of what is now Wheathold Green, Fair Oak, Ashford Hill, Plastow Green, Goose Hill, Mill Green, Headley Common, Axmansford, Haughurst Hill, Little Aldershot and parts of Wolverton Common.
After 1850 both the Kingsclere Woodlands parish church and parish school served this extensive rural community, not just the village of Ashford Hill where they were situated, until Headley gained its own church and school.
The most significant phase in the formation of the villages and its landscape was the parliamentary Enclosure Act of 1843 for Kingsclere. This swept away Holt Common and most of the neighbouring common lands except for Crookham and Greenham Commons which survived until WW2 when Greenham Common was commandeered ‘temporarily’ as a military airbase. This enclosure provided for building of new roads and the settlement of Headley out of previously largely-unpopulated heath land. Since the end of the Cold War and the controversial basing of nuclear cruise missiles at Greenham, the UK MOD has reinstated the airbase site as a heath land wildlife park, but allowed industrial, commercial and distribution development on the southern portion flanking the A339.
After 1850 the rural population drifted away to more lucrative manufacturing and commercial activity of the urban centres and these trends were increased by education, communication, mobility and war in the C20th.
Residential development in the parish Since WW2 focused mainly around the Headley area which is numerically the larger settlement. The older character of Ashford Hill, Plastow Green and the other hamlets has been preserved largely unchanged over the years, despite growing pressures for denser infill settlement and property improvement as values soared. Development in neighbouring parishes has caused an increase in traffic congestion and hazard. The continuity of land ownership has been increasingly challenged by significant price inflation and socio-economic change.
Ecologically, certain unaffected landscapes at the former Headley Gravel pit are nature reserves and at Ashford Hill water meadows designated as a National Nature Reserve. Surrounding areas are Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI’s) or Areas of Special Landscape Quality (ASLQ)
The parish is limited in area but wide in its range of soil type, land use, habitat and landscape. The key is the varied underlying geology and soil type. A very clear chalk escarpment near Kingsclere marks the spring line sources of the gully and river systems running north to the Enborne across the plain of clays, gravels and sometimes flint over chalk which make up the parish. Woodland on the clays and loams was progressively cleared for mixed farming. The infertile gravels were managed as heath land to provide rough grazing.
Farming before 1970 was traditionally beef and dairy cattle, with barley as the main cereal crop, but economics has led to almost totally arable farming - even on the poorer soils which require high inputs of fertiliser to maintain yield - or equiculture and activity subsidised by non-farm income. There are several areas of ancient semi-natural woodland in the parish and areas of grassland which have survived very much as they were a few hundred years ago.
The larger farming estates such as Beenham Court at Headley (site of Cheam School today) were often owned by Oxford University until the mid C19th then gentlemen farmers and retired military figures before being sold in the 1930’s. The Duke of Wellington estate based at Stratfield Saye had bought several farms coming up for auction in the early/mid 1800’s. Many larger estates including the Bolton Family long term Lords of the Manor, sold off land for development after inheritance impacted after WW1 and new owners who had made their fortune from retail and other sources took over certain of the larger farms post WW2. Today the focus is about ecological sustainability and the marginal economic returns from farming which need external income sources and EU subsidy to survive.
Today, there are a diverse set of modern business and professional owners of these traditional properties, and this reflects a change in the historic role of agriculture as key employer, of the church as landowner and social service provider, and the diversity and mobility of post-WW2 society.
More information on the above topics may be found in the parish history ‘Kingsclere Woodlands Story’ (C) 2000:G Cusworth and R Dobbs.