Ashingdon Parish Council
THE PARISH COUNCIL
Ashingdon Parish Council comprises 11 Councillors and a Parish Clerk.
The Parish Council meets once per month at 7.30pm on the first Monday of each month except August, except when the first Monday is a public holiday, when the meeting will held on the first normal Monday thereafter.
Parish Council meetings all take place in the Ashingdon and East Hawkwell Memorial Hall in the Meetings Room.
The Parish recently decided to allow the Public to be present at all Parish Council meetings when an item on the agenda permits the Public to present topics to the Parish Council for submission, discussiion and actions, all of which will be minuted.
A Parish Meeting used to be held six times per year - every two months, open to all Parishioners, members of the Public and the Press. However, the decision to allow members of the Public to attend all Parish Council meetings made the separate Parish Meetings unnecessary because the normal Parish Council meeting became the forum where any person may bring up any subject for submission and discussion in which matters discussed, decisions and requested actions are minuted and will be carried out or investigated and reported on at subsequent meetings. We are bound by law to hold the Annual Parish Meeting open to all members of the Public, which is separate from our Annual Parish Council Meeting. This would be held on the first working Monday in May.
The Public has always been permitted to attend the December Parish Council meeting when drinks and Christmas snacks are shared with all present after the Council meeting.
Parish councils were established as separate legal entities in 1894. Before 1894, there were various groups responsible for parish administration and a system of local government based on ecclesiastical parish boundaries by or under the guidance of The Church dating from fuedal times from about the 8th century. In 1894, the law permitted the transfer of civil administration of parishes and small towns from The Church to parish councils.
ASHINGDON and SOUTH FAMBRIDGE PARISH COUNCILS
Parishes have been ecclesiastic administrative areas based on the parish boundaries of each church since Saxon times before the year 1000. They were well established since then and had firm boundaries and administered church and civil duties from the middle ages until recent times, with amendments only taking place from the late 1800s and during the 1900s. Before 1894, there were various groups responsible for parish administration and a system of local government based on ecclesiastical parish boundaries by or under the guidance of The Church dating from fuedal times from about the 8th century. Parishes also served as local administrative areas for such matters as churches, schools, law and order, the collection of local taxes and church tithes, for building the amenities of a village, maintenance of the infrastructure, care of the poor (parish relief) and many other matters.
Every parishioner was obliged to attend their own parish church every Sunday, or rather every Sabbath, which could include Saturday night – after dark. Sometimes the parishioners lived quite a distance from their own parish’s church and another church in a different parish could be much nearer. But, they could not attend that nearer church and had to make the longer journey to their own parish church. This is one of the reasons for the existence of many footpaths, tracks and roads, which today seem to lead in a curious direction. They were a short cut from where the parishioners lived and led to their parish church.
In 1894, the law permitted the transfer of civil administration of villages and small towns from The Church to new civil parish councils. The establishment of civil parishes operating alongside the church parishes started from then and the civil parishes of Ashingdon and South Fambridge were both established and held their first Parish Meetings on 4th December 1894. Ashingdon held their first meeting in the “National School Room” (at Ashingdon Schools) and the meeting was chaired by Mr John Jolly, a local farmer, the first Parish Council Chairman. South Fambridge held their first meeting in the “Rectory Farm House” and the meeting was chaired by Mr Hugh Crawford, the first Parish Council Chairman.
It seems that the civil parishes ended at some time during the early 1900s, because by March 1931, Ashingdon applied to The Essex County Council “to form a parish council” and on 4th August 1931 five parish councillors were elected to this new parish council. Also, on 27th August 1933, proposals were put forward for Hawkwell to be incorporated into the Ashingdon Parish Council, but this did not succeed. In May 1934, South Fambridge applied to the Essex County Council to form a separate parish. This was granted and elections were held on 13th August 1934, after which, this new parish council held it first meeting on 27th August 1934. A few years later, the government suggested the amalgamation of smaller parish councils and on 27th June 1938, South Fambridge objected to the amalgamation with Ashingdon Parish, and although a public notice of the approved amalgamation was displayed, it was postponed, probably due the imminence of war in Europe.
However, by 1946 and during the post-war reorganisation, Ashingdon and South Fambridge were merged and they held their last meetings as separate parish councils on 28th March 1946, after which, they formed one new larger parish and held new council meetings as “Ashingdon Parish Council”. South Fambridge is represented in the combined Parish Council and has their own elected representative on the Rochford District Council.
