ASHPERTON

Identity: confirmed — The registry location and associated place identify Ashperton, Herefordshire. The historical variants Aspretuna, Spertune, and Stretton and Asperton are consistent with the documented Ashperton manor, whose medieval manor house was fortified by William de Grandison in 1292. The supplied National Archives court-roll, rental, and rent-account references also concern Ashperton together with the historically connected manor of Stretton Grandison.
Representative point: 52.07083, -2.52411
Basis: documented_manor_house — Site of Ashperton Castle, the documented medieval fortified manor house/manor-house site, at OS grid reference SO 6417 4150. The surviving earthworks and moat are immediately associated with the former manor house.
Point confidence: high
Boundary status: representative_point_only
Boundary period:
Boundary confidence: none
Boundary basis: Available evidence establishes the location of the Ashperton manor house and confirms Ashperton as a Domesday and medieval manor, but does not provide a documented perimeter of the historical manorial land. The Domesday assessment of 5.5 hides, meadow, and woodland is insufficient to reconstruct a defensible polygon, and the modern civil-parish boundary must not be substituted for the manor boundary.
Sources:
- The National Archives: Ashperton manor record F279995: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/c/F279995 — Registry record identifying the exact manor as Ashperton, with authority/reference GB/NNAF/M303203.
- Herefordshire Through Time: Ashperton Castle: https://htt.herefordshire.gov.uk/herefordshires-past/the-medieval-period/castles/gazetteer-of-herefordshire-castles/parishes-a/ — Identifies Ashperton Castle at HER no. 460, OS grid reference SO 6418 4151; describes the surviving moated manor/castle site and records that William de Grandison had built a manor at Ashperton and received a licence to crenellate it in 1292.
- Ashperton Castle, Geograph record: https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6027863 — Provides a geotagged WGS84 location for the Ashperton Castle manor-house site: 52.07070, -2.52414, based on OS grid reference SO 6417 4150.
- Ashperton Neighbourhood Development Plan, Herefordshire Council: https://www.herefordshire.gov.uk/downloads/file/20787/neighbourhood_development_plan_march_2020.pdf — Confirms the earthworks of the medieval fortified manor house and moat known as Ashperton Castle as a scheduled monument within the historic Ashperton landscape.
- Ashperton Historic Environment Record monument report: https://ashperton.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Ashperton-Historic-Env-Record-Doc.pdf — Records Ashperton Castle/HER 460 as centred on SO 6418 4151 and distinguishes the monument site from the wider civil parish; useful corroboration of the documented manor-house location.
Warnings / uncertainty:
- No defensible historical manorial-land polygon was found in the available evidence.
- The representative point marks the documented manor-house site, not the full extent of the medieval or later manor.
- The Ashperton civil-parish boundary, modern estate boundaries, and scheduled-monument boundary have not been used as substitutes for the historical manor boundary.