Ashton Keynes

Coordinates: 51°38′42″N 1°56′06″W / 51.645°N 01.935°W / 51.645; -01.935

Ashton Keynes is a village and civil parish in north Wiltshire, England which borders with Gloucestershire. The village is about 5 miles (8 km) south of Cirencester and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) west of Cricklade. At the 2011 census the population of the parish was 1,400. The village lies within the Cotswold Water Park and is the only settlement substantially on both sides of the River Thames, which has many channels here, centred 6.5 miles (10 km) from its source at Thames Head.

The parish includes the hamlet of North End.

History

The village was known as Aesctun in 800 AD, appeared in the Domesday book within Cricklade hundred as Essitone in 1086, and changed its name ten times in the next 800 years until its present name was recorded.

A large Romano-British settlement was on the edge of the present-day village; it was excavated in the late 1980s in advance of extensive gravel extraction. Ashton Keynes Castle (or Hall's Close) was a 12th-century ringwork, just north of the village.