Introduction to Aston Botterell

This page provides an introduction to the history of Aston Botterell. For further information, look at the related webpages menu

History of Aston Botterell

Aston Botterell largely occupies the ground between the River Rea to the east and the Brown Clee to the west. It sits on the Old Red Sandstone and which provides good farming conditions. The historic parish was larger than the modern civil parish, including Charlecotte, now in Neenton and Cleobury North.

Prior to Saxon times, the only evidence for human activity in the parish is provided by two flint arrowheads found near the Bold Farm. However, it seems most unlikely that there would be no settlement in the Iron Age or during the Roman occupation. Be that as it may, the earliest documentary record comes from the Domesday Book, when it was made up of three distinct estates; Aston, Norton and Charlecotte. It is possible to make a guess at how this came about. In 1186 the chapels of Aston Botterell, Wheathill, Farlow and Wrickton (in Stottesdon) were subject to the church of Stottesdon. This probably reflects an administrative arrangement going back into Saxon times, when the chapelries were all part of a large parish administered from a minster church at Stottesdon. The boundaries of this “super-parish” (the parochia) in turn may have been those of a large early Saxon estate, administered from Stottesdon. As the population grew, the large estates were usually broken up, given to either the ruling elite of Saxon times or a lower level of prosperous farmers. This is what probably happened to Aston, splitting into three estates by the time of the Norman Conquest.

Of the three Domesday manors, Norton was the largest, assessed as a two hide manor (nominally 240 acres, but it is notoriously difficult to convert Domesday hides into real acreages). Aston itself was 1 hide. Whilst these were occupied by distinct undertenants, both held their land from Reginald, Sheriff of Shropshire, who in turn had been given them by Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury. It would have been a relatively simple operation to reunite the two manors, an operation that perhaps took place at some time in the 12th Century. Certainly by the mid-thirteenth Century it was a single manor of 3 hides and Norton had been reduced in status to one of its component hamlets. Charlecotte, half a hide in 1066 but waste in 1086, followed a different path, becoming associated with an estate based on Castle Holdgate in Corvedale. By the 13th Century the manor became based at the Bold, with its own chapel; the latter finished its life as a barn, being demolished sometime in the 19th Century.

The name “Aston” rather uninformatively means “east town”. The Botterell suffix comes from the family of that name, who can be traced back to the start of the 13th Century. By the middle of that Century Thomas Botterell was the Lord of the manor. Thomas was a significant figure within Shropshire, at one time being in charge of Clun Castle. Thomas may have been responsible for building a new manor house at Aston Botterell to replace an older moated house; the site of the later still survives as an earthwork close to the church. Thomas also had aspirations to develop Aston Botterell as a market town; in 1264 he was granted a charter to hold a weekly market and an annual fair. Aston Botterell’s urban pretensions must have been short-lived as it would have been in competition with Cleobury Mortimer and Bridgnorth. Nonetheless, his son, William, still claimed these rights in 1292. Furthermore, in 1244 Stottesdon had been granted a fair and market and in 1300 Wheathill was given these rights, so there must have been some feeling that there was scope for another market in the boom years up to the early 14th Century.

The Botterell family remained associated with Aston Botterell until the 17th Century and oversaw a rebuilding of the hall in Elizabethan times. By this time, Aston Botterell had probably assumed much of its present character, as a series of isolated farms marking the sites of medieval hamlets. The open fields seem to have been largely enclosed by the early 17th Century.

The economy has always rested on agriculture. However, in the 18th Century water-powered industry became important at Charlecotte. Corn milling at Charlecotte dates from the Middle Ages, but by 1709 one of the mills was a blast furnace, owned by the Knight family and by 1725 there was also a paper mill. The furnace worked throughout most of the 18th Century, producing high-grade pig iron using charcoal, but with improvements in the quality of coke-produced iron, it became uneconomic and closed. The paper mill continued until the early 19th Century. In the mid-19th Century a number of brickyards worked in the parish; the remains of a kiln survive at the Bold. In the 20th Century, the railway age briefly touched Aston Botterell when there was a station on the Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway from 1908-1938, although the railway continued to operate until 1967 to serve a naval depot at Ditton Priors.