Aslockton is an English village and civil parish east of Nottingham and east of Bingham, on the north bank of the River Smite opposite Whatton-in-the-Vale. The parish is also adjacent to Scarrington, Thoroton and Orston and within the Rushcliffe borough of Nottinghamshire.Rushcliffe Retrieved 7 February 2016. The population was recorded as 974 in the 2011 census,East Midlands population. Retrieved 15 February 2020. doubling to 1,937 at the 2021 census.
Toponymy Appearing as Aslachetone in the Domesday Book of 1086,J. Morris, (ed.) Domesday Book: Nottinghamshire (Chichester, 1977),1:57 inter alia the place name seems to contain an Old Norse personal name Aslakr + tūn (Old English) meaning an enclosure, a farmstead, a village, an estate, etc., so "Farm or settlement of a man called Aslakr".J. Gover, A. Mawer and F. M. Stenton, eds., Place Names of Nottinghamshire (Cambridge, 1940), p. 219; A. D. Mills, Dictionary of English Place-Names (Oxford, 2002), p. 22; E. Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (Oxford, 1960), p. 16; V. Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-names (Cambridge, 2002), p. 23. There are 19 such place names (a Scandinavian personal name followed by tūn ) in Nottinghamshire, all of them in the Domesday survey, and all apparently ancient villages.J. Gover et al, p. xviii.
Heritage All that remains of the 12th-century Aslockton Castle are some earthworks. The motte, called Cranmer's Mound, stands about 16 feet (5 m) high.
Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury 1533–1553, was born in Aslockton and lived until the age of 14 in his parents' cottage, which still stands on Main Street. The Archbishop Cranmer Church of England Primary School (an academy since 2014, having opened in 1968), the Cranmer Pre-School, and the local social facility, the Thomas Cranmer Centre, are named after him. (For secondary education, Toot Hill School in Bingham has a sixth form and academy status.)Toot Hill School Retrieved 7 February 2016. Aslockton originally had its own Holy Trinity Chapel, a peculiar under the collegiate church of Southwell Minster rather than the diocesan bishop,A Vision of Britain. Retrieved 4 January 2014. but this fell into ruins and was incorporated into a private house. Some remains of it can still be seen.Rushcliffe Conservation Area.Retrieved 4 January 2014.; Cranmer Local History Group. Whatton in 1792. Cranmer and his father worshipped at the Church of St John of Beverley, Whatton.The Nottinghamshire Village Book. Compiled from materials submitted by Women's Institutes in the County (Newbury/Newark: Countryside Books/NFWI), p. 11. He has also given his name to a local prospect mound.Cranmer Local History Group..
John Cranmer, a gentleman, was living in "Aslacton", in 1452.National Archives; Plea Rolls of the Court of Common Pleas; year: 1452: image seen as first entry on: http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT3/H6/CP40no764/bCP40no764dorses/IMG_2072.htm, with Henry Frowyk as plaintiff
The population of Aslockton was 171 in 1801, 273 in 1821, and 289 in 1831.William White: History, Gazetteer and Directory of Nottinghamshire... (Sheffield, 1832), p. 479. The village had a population of 363 in 1936.Cranmer Local History Group. The page gives details of the 1936 entry in Kelly's Directory.
The land for Aslockton Cemetery was purchased in 1869, at which time the only place of worship in the village was a Methodist chapel, which has since been converted into flats.Cranmer Local History Group. Aslockton Cemetery.
The present Grade II listed St Thomas's Church was designed by the architect Sir Reginald Blomfield and erected in 1890–1892 in memory of a former vicar of Whatton, Thomas K. Hall, who drowned in February 1890 as RMS Quetta was wrecked off Queensland on her way to Thursday Island.Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England:Nottinghamshire (Harmondsworth, Middx: Penguin, 1979), p. 59. His mother, Mrs Sophia E. Hall, paid for the church. The Quetta window on the north wall depicting the shipwreck was designed by Michael Stokes in 2002, as was the east window, dedicated to Cranmer, which has Jesus showing his hands to Doubting Thomas.Southwell & Nottingham Church History Project. Retrieved 4 January 2014. The church has a single bell in a bell cote at the west end.A Short Guide to the Parish Churches of the Bingham Rural Deanery, ed. J. Pickworth-Hutchinson. (Bingham: Deanery Chapter, 1963).
The parish forms part of the Cranmer group, with Hawksworth, Scarrington, Thoroton, Whatton and Orston. The incumbent is Rev. Tim Chambers. The vicarage is in Aslockton.the cranmer group
Amenities The Thomas Cranmer Centre opened in 2010 and serves as the village hall as well as the church hall. It replaced an earlier village hall and is attached to the parish church on Main Street.
Despite the village's small size, it had two pubs: the Old Greyhound and the Cranmer Arms. The former closed in May 2007, but the new owners submitted a planning application to turn it into a restaurant. The restaurant was not included in the final housing development. The village has a small shop, which includes a post office and a dry-cleaning service. Aslockton Hall houses a nursing and residential home for the elderly, recent guests have included Rachel Lester, Pink tribute act, Ant & Seb and Spacky.Care Quality Commission site. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
The Aslockton windmill and bake house stood in Mill Lane ().Aslockton and Whatton Local History Group (N.D.), The Changing Village, Nottingham, p. 47. The mill was a wooden post mill, weather-boarded on a brick roundhouse, with four single patent sails. The miller and baker in 1864 was Job Heathcote.White's Nottinghamshire Directory (1864)
The village railway station has regular services to Nottingham, Grantham, Spalding and Skegness. There is a bus service to Bingham and Bottesford for onward connections to Nottingham, Newark and Grantham.
Governance Aslockton has a parish council that belongs under Rushcliffe Borough Council.
The local free quarterly newsletter, delivered to every house, is called The Voice.Aslockton Online. Retrieved 5 January 2014
Sports Whatton and Aslockton have a joint cricket club said to date back before 1815.Cranmer Local History Digest, September 2005, p. 4. It has two senior teams in the South Nottinghamshire Cricket League and a colts team in the Newark Under 15s Premiership League.Aslockton Online. Retrieved 5 January 2014. Aslockton Cranmer Football Club fields several teams for adults and youngsters.Aslockton Online. Retrieved 5 January 2014 There is also a tennis club,Aslockton Online Retrieved 5 January 2014. and table tennis teams at the Thomas Cranmer Centre.Aslockton Online. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
Famous residents In birth order
Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), Archbishop of Canterbury, leader and martyr of the English Reformation, was born in Aslockton. John Robertson (born 1953), Scotland and Nottingham Forest footballer, took over the Old Greyhound pub for some years from 1986.Grantham Matters Retrieved 5 September 2016. Chris Urbanowicz, rock musician, was born in Aslockton in 1981.
See also Aslockton Castle Thomas Cranmer Listed buildings in Aslockton
References
External links
A short, rounded, somewhat critical account of the life of Cranmer: Retrieved 5 January 2014 Cranmer Local History Group website: Retrieved 20 August 2020