Newbold Pacey is the older of the two places, Newbold Pacey being at one time the village and Ashorne the hamlet. Local folklore says that Ashorne came about when a gentleman named Edward Carew came to Newbold Pacey to escape the plague in London, but brought it with him. The villagers then crossed Oozley Brook to escape the plague and built their houses in Ashorne. Ashorne is an Anglo-Saxon word for north-east, so it signifies the north-east corner of the parish.
There is a monument to Edward Carew and his infant daughter in the church. This monument was brought from the previous church which was partly wooden. The present church was designed by J. L. Pearson, who was also the architect of Truro cathedral. There are a few interesting monuments in the church, one to a past vicar who was nephew of the poet Southey and another to somebody who was
'a martyr to the gout.'
It is rumoured that a lot of the cottages in Newbold Pacey were burnt down and never rebuilt so that only a few remain today. The old vicarage has an exact replica in Virginia, USA. In Ashorne the oldest houses are around the Green, except Stonehouse Farm House, which is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Several of the houses are wattle and daub, the marl being collected from the 'Holloway', which is now a 'C' class road. At one time this was the only way in and out of the village.
In more recent times the village has built a new village hall which replaced a hut dating from the First World War. Unfortunately, the village has lost its school, post office and shop. The chapel has been sold and converted into a house.
One of the local large houses, Ashorne Hill, was once owned by Mr Bryant of Bryant and May Matches, and was bought by the iron and steel industry during the Second World War as their headquarters. It is now a management college.
There is a cricket field which is the only one in the country where you cross water to get from the pavilion to the field. In the adjoining Ashorne House, at one time, lived Major Bouch, whose uncle was the builder of the doomed Tay Bridge.
As in countless English villages, Newbold and Ashorne now have little to offer in the way of employment. Thus, families which have lived in the parish for many generations must look elsewhere for jobs. As they commute to nearby towns, so do the newcomers to the village. There are still a significant number of family names which also appeared in the 1851 census, and whose grandparents feature, as children, in the 1869-70 Log Book of the village school.
NB The village information above is taken from The Warwickshire Village Book, written by members of the Warwickshire Federation of Women's Institutes and published by Countryside Books. Click on the link Countryside Books to view Countryside's range of other local titles.