For the Brisbane Bears player, see Ashley Green (footballer)

Ashley Green (footballer)

Ashley Green is a former Australian rules footballer who played with the Brisbane Bears in the Australian Football League .Green was initially a 1989 VFL Draftee, chosen by Essendon with the 19th selection...

.

Ashley Green is a village and civil parish in Chiltern district

Chiltern (district)

Chiltern is one of four local government districts of Buckinghamshire in south central England. It is named after the Chiltern Hills on which the region sits.The main towns in the district are Amersham and Chesham...

 of Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire

Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. The parish is on the boundary with Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

, midway between Chesham

Chesham

Chesham is a market town in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, England. It is located 11 miles south-east of the county town of Aylesbury. Chesham is also a civil parish designated a town council within Chiltern district. It is situated in the Chess Valley and surrounded by farmland, as well as...

 and Berkhamsted

Berkhamsted

-Climate:Berkhamsted experiences an oceanic climate similar to almost all of the United Kingdom.-Castle:...

.

Originally a hamlet within Chesham parish, its toponym

Toponymy

Toponymy is the scientific study of place names , their origins, meanings, use and typology. The word "toponymy" is derived from the Greek words tópos and ónoma . Toponymy is itself a branch of onomastics, the study of names of all kinds...

 is derived from the Old English for Ash Field, referring to the forest that once covered this part of the Chiltern Hills

Chiltern Hills

The Chiltern Hills form a chalk escarpment in South East England. They are known locally as "the Chilterns". A large portion of the hills was designated officially as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1965.-Location:...

.

Churches

Ashley Green used to have a Baptist church, situated down Hog Lane, which was a branch of Broadway Baptist Church in Chesham. It closed in the early 1900s.

Ashley Green became a parish in 1876, when the church of St John the Evangelist

John the Evangelist

Saint John the Evangelist is the conventional name for the author of the Gospel of John...

 was constructed in the village. Newspapers and coins were built into the pillar adjoining the pulpit

Pulpit

Pulpit is a speakers' stand in a church. In many Christian churches, there are two speakers' stands at the front of the church. Typically, the one on the left is called the pulpit...

. At that time, and until 1875, the village lay within the parish of Great Chesham. The Church has since returned to the team ministry of Great Chesham. The Church was built and endowed by the gift of Elizabeth Dorrien of Clifton, Bristol

Clifton, Bristol

Clifton is a suburb of the City of Bristol in England, and the name of both one of the city's thirty-five council wards. The Clifton ward also includes the areas of Cliftonwood and Hotwells...

, in memory of her sisters and dedicated on 31 December 1873. The land was given by Lord Chesham

William Cavendish, 2nd Baron Chesham

William George Cavendish, 2nd Baron Chesham was a British Liberal politician.A member of the Cavendish family headed by the Duke of Devonshire, Chesham was the son of Charles Compton Cavendish, 1st Baron Chesham and Lady Catherine Susan Gordon, daughter of George Gordon, 9th Marquess of Huntly...

. The architect was G.E. Street

George Edmund Street

George Edmund Street was an English architect, born at Woodford in Essex.- Life :Street was the third son of Thomas Street, solicitor, by his second wife, Mary Anne Millington. George went to school at Mitcham in about 1830, and later to the Camberwell collegiate school, which he left in 1839...

 and the contractor G. Cooper of Aylesbury

Aylesbury

Aylesbury is the county town of Buckinghamshire in South East England. However the town also falls into a geographical region known as the South Midlands an area that ecompasses the north of the South East, and the southern extremities of the East Midlands...

 Buckinghamshire. The total cost of the building was over £2,000 with the endowment

Financial endowment

A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....

 being a further £6,000.

The Church is built of local knapped black flints with Bath stone dressings. There is a bellcote

Bell-Cot

A bell-cot, bell-cote or bellcote, is a small framework and shelter for one or more bells, supported on brackets projecting from a wall or built on the roof of chapels or churches which have no towers. It often holds the Sanctus bell rung at the Consecration....

 with two bells. There is a boiler house, and the church was originally being heated by "Hayden's hot air apparatus", now disused. The porch is on the Northern side of the building the front of which is an oak moulded archway, the timber being framed in red bricks - herringboned. The roof is of plain clay tiles. St. John's has stained glass windows from various makers including Burlison and Grylls

Burlison and Grylls

Burlison and Grylls is the name of an English company who produced stained glass windows from 1868 onwards.The company of Burlison and Grylls was founded in 1868 at the instigation of the architects George Frederick Bodley and Thomas Garner. Both John Burlison and Thomas Grylls had trained in the...

, Kempe and Co., James Powell and Sons, C.E. Moore and A.L. Moore.

Some of St. James' pews have a note on them that states:

The seats in this Church are entirely free and unappropriated. The Church Wardens look to the Congregation for the support through the offertory of the usual Church expenses.

The bellcote has two bells, one of a diameter of one foot seven and a half inches (50 cm) and the other of a diameter of one foot five inches (43 cm). John Taylor & Co of Loughborough

Loughborough

Loughborough is a town within the Charnwood borough of Leicestershire, England. It is the seat of Charnwood Borough Council and is home to Loughborough University...

 cast them in 1874 and refurbished and re-hung in the early 1990s.

In 2010 a kitchen and toilet was installed in the Church. In keeping with the tradition of the original builders, a time capsule that included a newspaper and a photograph of the congregation was buried under the floor of the kitchen.

Population

Today Ashley Green is a popular home for commuters and executives who commute daily to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. There are also many local residents who have lived and raised children who also continue to live in the village along with several farms surrounding the area.

Local business

Ashley Green has one public house, The Golden Eagle, referred to locally as The Eagle. On the junction of Chesham Road and Hog Lane the corner house used to be a shop and post office. An old post box still remains built into one of the entrance posts.
There is a "farm shop" at Hog Lane farm and the Chesham side of the village has a farm selling free range eggs.

Community facilities

The old school is used by a playgroup youth club and for ballet classes. The village hall also hosts regular events such as the village fete and for rehearsals by local actors who put on productions around the local area. Behind the village hall in The Glebe there is a play park. There is a well on the village green outside the entrance gates to the old school.