Ashford occurs as comparatively most common English title: it goes back to Old English æscet, indicating the ford nigh to the clump of ash-trees.

History

These are in all probability that a town originates from either either an original personal injury settlement established all about 893AD, although a Roman road passed across on text from the iron making area to Canterbury. These are utilized in the Domesday Book, as getting a church & 2 mills, under the title Essetesford. A manor was owned by Hugh de Montford, Constable of England at a instance.

Its importance as a rural centre was confirmed within 1243 while it was incorporated, & by 1600 it got risen to get an crucial market town, primarily for stock.

Area of a parish church date from either the 13th century however was substantially restored in the 15th century by using numbers of alterations since. Within 1638 the loose grammar school was founded here. It was build upon the churchyard’s west side, & remained there until 1846.

Communications

Roads

Ashford was one of a towns that became a hub whenever the roads were turnpiked in the second half of the 18th century. Now these are on the M20 motorway which offers easy access to London, Maidstone and Folkestone, with junctions 9 & 10 serving Ashford. A A20 runs almost parallel by using a throughway, & a A28 allows access to Canterbury and Tenterden. Too allowing Ashford come a A251 for Faversham & the A2070 for Brenzett and Hastings.

A A292 Ashford Ring Road is easily known for existence popular by having son racers.

Railways

A South Eastern Railway opened its main line from Londin to the town on 1 December 1842, and by 7 February 1844 trains were running across to Dover. A importance to a town of the railway, nonetheless, was whenever the company established its locomotive works here. the railway community experienced its have shops, schools, pothouse & bathhouse, & great deal of a locality retains the look of a “railway town� [cp Swindon and Crewe].

Ashford became the junction by using the line to Margate opened inside 1846; in 1851 a line to Hastings was opened: and in 1 July 1884 the final connection, from Maidstone, was made.

Whenever a Channel Tunnel was opened in 1994, a fresh Ashford International station began operating. It today serves a high-high-velocity rail hyperlink that began service inside 2003.

Ashford today

Ashford is twinned with Bad Münstereifel in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Fougères in Brittany and (since 1999) Hopewell, Virginia USA. A Ashford constituency's Member of Parliament is Damian Green (Conservative).

inside essence a modern town, little is left of the old Ashford, apart from either a select few half-half-timber buildings in Middle Row & in the area of the god's acre in the town centre. a total of old buildings were flushed to produce way for the controversial circumferential around the centre, built in the early Seventies. 3 modern mall come in a town: Park Mall, County Square & the recently Designer Outlet. Bank Street & High Street come traffic-free streaming searching thoroughfares.

A brobdingnagian build-higher of commercial importance of the town, also when its strategical location, is found per total of industrial estates at present opened higher. It include: Waterbrook - 740,000 m², a key places for production, storage & distribution by using freight clearance facility Eureka Science & Business Park - manufacturing web sites & prestigiousness professional complexes Orbital Park - 570,000 m² Fourteen more Business Parks & Industrial Estates

Campbell Soup UK have a factory that produces Batchelor's Soup, which until 2001 was owned by Unilever.

Famous people

Simone Weil, the French philosopher, died around Grosvenor Sanatorium, Ashford, inside 1943, & is buried in the town's Bybrook Cemetery. Weil restricted herself to the meagerly war-period diet she imagined her compatriots back inside France would become eating; the medical examiner so recorded the suicide finding of fact after her problem was exacerbated by undernourishment. The road within Ashford is known as when her.

More personalities attached by using a town come: Sir John Furley - one of a founders of St. John Ambulance Service. Sir John Fogge - Lord of Repton Manor he restored a parish church around 13th century &, at his have expense, built virtually all of the bell tower. Dr John Wallis - Internationally recognised when one of a greatest mathematicians, credited by Sir Isaac Newton when existence a founder of his theory of gravitation.

Education
Ashford is personal to many primary and secondary schools. There exists as well the college in the ar along by owning the library touching town. Schools & colleges come employed following: Ashford School (fee paying) Ashford School of Art & Design (Henwood Industrial Estate and Tufton Street) Godinton Primary School Highworth Grammar School for Girls The N School Norton Knatchbull School South Kent College - Jemmett Campus South Kent College - South Ashford Campus Towers School Willesborough Baby School Willesborough Junior School

Population

Within 1801, a people of Ashford & Willesborough was 2,600; around 1861 this experienced other than tripled to 8,800; & in 1961 a figure was 28,000. A Ashford registration dominion inside 2001 recorded 102,000.