WELCOME 

Thanks must go to all who have contributed photos, memories and articles over the years. The history of a village is never finished; there is always something to add so please make CONTACT if you have pictures, history or memories to share. YESTERDAY is HISTORY TODAY as TODAY will be HISTORY TOMORROW!  

Thorp (Torp) was the original settlement and is mentioned in Little Domesday as the land of Count Eustace of Boulogne with Ashwell as an adjacent hamlet but, by the mid-12th Century became known as AshwellThorp. More can be read about the earlier history of the village in Little Domesday and "An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk" by Francis Blomefield. A 20th Century Domesday - BBC Domesday Project - can be glimpsed elsewhere..

However, this site covers the more recent history of Ashwellthorpe, a village some ten miles south-west of Norwich and three miles south-east of the market town of Wymondham, with adjacent villages being Fundenhall, Hapton, Silfield, Tacolneston and Wreningham.

Where We Are

It is planned to include the development of and changes within the village and its way of life over the last two hundred years with research carried out at the Norfolk Record Office and with reminiscences from villagers dating back to the late 19th Century, and will touch upon documented history from earlier days.

It was a "closed" village with most of the farms, land and dwellings under the ownership of the Ashwellthorpe Estate, home to the Berners Barony, until the Estate was broken up and sold in the early part of the 20th Century. The village was self-sufficient in many trades and services, there were shops, there was a school and there were pubs but, from official statistics, it can be seen that the population had been dropping since 1831 (471) to 312 in 1931. Much of the present housing in the village was developed during the 1960s and 1970s with a resultant increase in population. The pictures below have much of the population of Ashwellthorpe gathered together to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 1977 and again, in 2002, to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

Photographs by Richard Tilbrook

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