Ansley, Warwickshire
Ansley is a civil parish in Warwickshire consisting of Ansley, Ansley Common, Church End, Birchley Heath and, previously, Ansley Hall Colliery.
Ansley is on the River Bourne, a tributary of the River Tame. The parish is 526 ft above sea level. The Arley Tunnel runs underneath Ansley village. Built in 1864 it forms part of the Birmingham to Leicester railway line.
Name
Some suggest that the etymology of the name Ansley is a derivation of the Old English ansetleah, with ‘anset’ meaning isolated hermitage and ‘leah’ meaning wooded pasture. Many place names in the area end with ‘ley’, including Arley, Fillongley, Astley, Hurley, Baxterley, Witherley, Corley, Binley, Allesley, Hinckley and Keresley. This is likely a result of the "sporadic clearing of the woods" that originally covered the area, and the gradual creation of new settlements preceding and following the Norman Conquest.Others believe the name to come from ãnstiga, with ‘ãn’ meaning one and ‘stig’ meaning path. Ansley appeared as Hanslei in the Domesday Book. Other later derivations have included Anesteleye, Anstle, Ansteley, Anceley, Anestelay and Anseley.
The name Ainsley is derived from Ansley.
History
The earliest evidence of human settlement in the area consists of a round barrow – an artificial mound concealing a grave – dating from the Bronze Age. Located near where Ansley Hall stands, the mound was excavated and lowered in the mid-twentieth century.Before the Norman Conquest, the principal landowners of the region were Leofric, Earl of Mercia and his family. Ansley’s Domesday Book entry lists a population of 6.5 households and 13 villagers. The settlement was part of the Hemlingford Hundred of Coleshill, Warwickshire, in the subdivision of Atherstone. After Leofric’s death in 1057 the title of Lord and tenant-in-chief passed to his wife, Lady Godiva. The Lord of the Manor was Nicholas the Bowman, a Norman soldier rewarded for his service during the conquest.
It was probably William II who gave Ansley to Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester,. In the early 12th century Ansley passed, through marriage, to the Earl of Arundel, however the manor and its land was given to his tenant, William de Hardreshulle, Lord of Hartshill. When Hardreshulle died, his eldest son, Robert, inherited Ansley. In the 13th century, Ansley and neighbouring Hartshill were granted by the Hardreshulle family to an unknown knight in exchange for 40 days’ service a year to the King. Towards the end of the century, the land passed by marriage to the Colepeper family.
Ansley Castle belonged to the Hastings family during the reign of Henry I. It was licensed to be crenellated by Johannes de Hastings in 1300 but was deserted soon after. By the turn of the 17th century, the antiquarian William Camden wrote of "mouldering towers covered with ivy". The castle no longer stands.
A few traces of a separate Norman castle built by Hugh Hardreshulle in 1125 are still visible.
When the Black Death reached Warwickshire in the mid-14th century, the people of Ansley abandoned the village and moved approximately a mile to the village’s current location. The parish church of St Laurence, however, remains in its original position. Traces of the original village can still be seen from the air, as can signs of medieval and post-medieval "ridge and furrow cultivation". By 1482, Ansley was owned by the Prior of St Mary’s, Coventry.
Bourne Brook, running north-east to south-west through the parish, has had an Irish bridge ford at Ansley Mill since the 12th century. The mill was sold by John Colepeper to Ralph Pickering and John Dyson in 1550. The building that currently stands was built in 1768. The last known miller was Isaac Thurn, in 1896. The mill has subsequently been converted into a private home.
Hoar Park, located on the B4114, was established in 1430. The current building dates from the 1730s. Hoar Park Wood was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1987. Other woodlands in the parish are Lady Wood, Seven Foot Wood and New Park Spinney.
Ansley Hall
Ansley Hall and its estate was home to the Ludford family for the best part of 450 years, from 1410 when Sir Thomas Colepeper leased 50 acres of the land to Henry Ludford. Colepeper’s grandson increased this to 300 acres, but not the hall itself. This gave rise to the situation where the Ludfords claimed for rightful ownership, taking legal action against the Colepepers in 1535 and 1544, both times unsuccessfully.In 1551, the Colepepers sold Ansley Hall and its estate. It passed through several hands, including George Wightman of Elmesthorpe, Leicester in 1558, who sold it to William Glover, a London dyer, in 1592. Sir Thomas Glover sold it in 1609 and it was purchased by George Ludford in 1613.
From this time, the inhabitants of hall were as follows:
- George Ludford m. Sarah Warren
- *John Ludford m. Catherine Prescott
- **James Ludford
- ***Thomas Bracebridge Ludford although younger than his brother Samuel, Thomas initially inherits Ansley Hall from his uncle, James Ludford
- ***Samuel Bracebridge Ludford inherited Ansley Hall from his younger brother m. Catherine Lewis
- ****John Bracebridge Ludford m. Juliana Newdigate
- *****John Newdigate Ludford m. Elizabeth Boswell
- ****** Elizabeth Juliana Bracebridge Ludford m. Sir John Francis Newdigate Ludford, 5th Baronet Chetwode assumed the name Newdigate Ludford by Royal Licence, 1826, leased mineral rights for the land under Ansley Hall to the Ansley Hall Coal and Iron Company in 1872
Nearby Bretts Hall, named for the Brett family, who lived there during the time of Henry III was pulled down in 1750 to create Ansley Park, which included a formal avenue, a Chinese temple and a hermitage which is attributed to Capability Brown who built a similar hermitage at Weston Park.
The park’s Chinese temple was designed by Sir William Chambers, architect to George III and author of Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils. Chambers had travelled to China in the 1740s and was regarded as an expert in his field, "unrivalled by others in his profession". He built Ansley Hall’s temple in 1767, and designed similar structures in Kew, Blackheath and Amesbury. Beneath the temple was a cell containing a monument relating to the Purefoy family, Parliamentarians who had had their estates confiscated because of their involvement in the death of Charles I.
In 1758 Ansley Hall was visited by the poet Thomas Warton, who would later become poet laureate. He wrote the poem An Inscription about Ansley’s hermitage which begins "Beneath the stony roof reclin’d / I sooth to peace my pensive mind.
In 1814 the park was described as "well stocked with deer".
Ansley Hall and its land was leased to the Ansley Hall Coal and Iron Company by the Ludford family in 1872 after which the hall was used as a club and institute for colliery officials and estate tenants. After the UK coal industry was nationalised in 1947, the Hall became a social club for miners and their families. With the collapse of the mining industry, the hall was derelict by the 1960s. Between 1998 and 2001 it was developed into 16 private homes.
Industry
Until coalmining came to Ansley in the 1870s, its principal industry was agricultural, with some silk ribbon weaving and brick making. In the early 19th century John Newdigate Ludford of Ansley Hall had been a "noted cheese-maker", selling to the Leicester market. By the early 20th century the principal crops were wheat, oats, peas and beans. Coal was worked on a small scale.Ansley Hall Colliery
The Ansley Hall Coal and Iron Company established the Ansley Hall Colliery in 1872. A pit was sunk between 1873 and 1874 with three shafts, one for ventilation. The mine was described as covering "approximately 3,000 acres and encompassed no less than eleven seams of coals, giving a total thickness of eighty feet and with six seams of a workable quality potentially providing over 100 million tons of gettable coal." The deepest point was 540 feet below ground. William Garside Phillips became the managing director in 1879 and was "instrumental in improving the colliery’s productivity and economic fortunes".Ansley Hall Coal and Iron Company’s largest stakeholder was Sir James Barlow, a cotton magnate from Bolton, Lancashire. His son, Sir Thomas Barlow, 1st Baronet, was chairman of the company for some time. His son in turn, Sir James Alan Barlow, 2nd Baronet was a director. The company bought the entire estate in 1899.
The colliery became significant enough to have its own railway line, and the Ansley Hall Colliery Branch Line opened in 1876. It remained in operation until 1959. In 1888, instead of relying on pit ponies for transporting coal and coal refuse the pit became fully electric, the first colliery in Warwickshire to adopt this "pioneer movement". In 1904 it could produce 1,200 tonnes of coal a day. At its peak, in 1940, it employed 670 people. The pit merged with Haunchwood colliery in 1959 which in turn closed in 1967.
The company also owned a brickworks capable of producing 3 million hard red bricks per year. Some of the bricks were used in the north aisle of St Laurence Church. Production ceased in 1959.
Water and electricity
Ansley was the last parish in Warwickshire to get a "more or less efficient supply of good water", and remained dependent on shallow wells until 1913. As late as 1927 there were still "no water closets in the village, and some of the sanitary arrangements were distinctly objectionable." In 1928 Ansley Parish Council cancelled the retaining fee they had been paying to the Nuneaton Fire Brigade, owing to "there being no public water supply, and very little other sources of supply in the Ansley village." In 1929 Atherstone’s Medical Officer of Health called Ansley "the one black spot of my district" in terms of water supply. He went on to say that "they would always have trouble at Ansley Village, as there was no water scheme. The water from the wells had been condemned."An article published in 1929 read, "Ansley village is one of those places which is just on the edge of things, yet possesses little in the way of modern conveniences. It has neither electric or gas lighting, is without an adequate water supply and has no sewerage system. A resident that owing to the lack of a sewerage system the district was infested with rats… and if a fire were to break out in a block of houses it would be impossible to get under control, there being no water to cope with it." In 1931, cast iron water mains were finally laid to the village. The following year a sewage scheme for Ansley Common and Chapel End was put in place.
The possibility of Ansley's being added to Nuneaton's electricity supply from the Leicestershire and Warwickshire Electric Power Company was first raised in 1923, when the supply to neighbouring Chapel End and Hartshill was imminent, Hartstill having "suffered for years from the quality of the gas, which had been rotten." In 1932, St Laurence Church was "fitted out and made ready for lighting by means of electricity" for which, in the words of the vicar, Rev. R P Rowan, "we have waited long and patiently." In 1934, despite "the large volume of traffic which use the road", there was still no street lighting in Ansley village, although later that year cabling to Ansley Road via Arbury Hall was laid.