Asthall

Coordinates: 51°48′00″N 1°34′59″W / 51.800°N 1.583°W / 51.800; -1.583

Asthal or Asthall is a village and civil parish on the River Windrush in Oxfordshire, about 6 miles (10 km) west of Witney. It includes the hamlets of Asthall Leigh, Field Assarts, Stonelands, Worsham and part of Fordwells. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 252.

Asthall village is just south of the River Windrush, which also forms the south-eastern part of its boundary. The remainder of the parish including all of its hamlets lie north of the river. A minor road through Fordwells forms most of the parish's northern boundary. Most of the remainder of the parish's boundary is formed by field boundaries.

Archaeology

On Leigh Hale Plain there are two barrows that may date from the Bronze Age.

The course of Akeman Street Roman Road that linked Watling Street with Fosse Way passes through the parish just south of the village and through the middle of Windrush Farm. The road crossed the Windrush about ¹⁄₂ mile (800 m) east of the village. Traces of a Roman settlement have been found on both sides of the course of the road on low-lying land between Windrush Farm and the site of the Roman river crossing. It was occupied from the middle of the first century AD to the latter part of the fourth century. Artefacts recovered include a bronze figurine of a bird seizing a hare.

Om Puri

Om Rajesh Puri OBE (born 18 October 1950) is an Indian actor who has appeared in mainstream commercial Indian and British films, Independent films and art films. His credits also include appearances in American films. He has been awarded Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India.

Early life

Om Puri was born in Ambala, Haryana, to a Punjabi Hindu family. His father worked in the railways and in the Indian Army. Puri graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. He is also an alumnus of the 1973 class of National School of Drama where Naseeruddin Shah was a co-student.

Career

Puri has worked in numerous Indian films and in many films produced in the United Kingdom and the United States.

He made his film debut in the 1976 Marathi film Ghashiram Kotwal, based on a Marathi play of the same name by Vijay Tendulkar. It was directed by K. Hariharan and Mani Kaul in cooperation with 16 graduates of the FTII. He has claimed that he was paid "peanuts" for his best work. Along with Amrish Puri, Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil, he was among the main actors who starred in what was then referred to as art films such as Bhavni Bhavai (1980), Sadgati (1981), Ardh Satya (1982), Mirch Masala (1986) and Dharavi (1992).

Dinesh Thakur

Dinesh Thakur (1947 – 20 September 2012) was a noted Indian theatre director, actor in theatre, television and Hindi film, where most notably he appeared as one of the leads in Rajnigandha 1974 and directed by Basu Chatterjee, which won both Filmfare Best Movie Award and the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie. He was the founder-director of ANK productions, a Mumbai-based theatre company, established in 1976.

Though he mainly appeared as character roles in Hindi films, as a screenwriter and story writer, he is known for writing the story and screenplay of Ghar (1978), which won him the 1979 Filmfare Best Story Award.

He died on 20 September 2012 due to kidney failure.

Career

Dinesh Thakur did his graduation from Kirori Mal College (KMC), Delhi University, where was also part of the KMC dramatic society.

He made his film debut in 1971, with Mere Apne, written and directed by Gulzar, and followed it up with Basu Bhattacharya's Anubhav (1971), opening film of his trilogy of marital discord in urban settings, there after he also appeared the third film, Griha Pravesh (1979). 1974 saw him appearing in Basu Chatterjee's landmark in middle cinema, Rajnigandha (1974), alongside Amol Palekar and Vidya Sinha, which won the Filmfare Best Film Award, and went on appear in several films with both the directors in the coming years.

Asthall Manor

Asthall Manor is a gabled Jacobean Cotswold manor house in Asthall, Oxfordshire. It was built in about 1620 and altered and enlarged in about 1916.

Early in the 20th century the house was the childhood home of the Mitford sisters.

History

Asthall Manor is a vernacular two-storey house with attics, built of local Cotswold limestone on an irregular H-plan with mullioned and mullioned-transomed windows and a stone-slated roof typical of the area. There are records of a house on the site since 1272 when Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall, owned a house on the site worth 12d. In 1304 the curia, garden and fish pond were valued at 10 shillings. The core of the current building at Asthall was built in 1620 for Sir William Jones on the site of the mediaeval hall. In 1688 the estate was sold to Sir Edmund Fettiplace; it stayed in branches of the same family for the next 130 years when it was sold to John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale in 1810. During their 116-year tenure the Freeman-Mitfords made many alterations to the house including the installation in 1899 of an electric power system powered by a water turbine fed by the River Windrush. The architect Charles Bateman altered and enlarged the house in 1916. In 1920 a former barn was converted to a ballroom 1920 and joined to the main house by a cloister. In 1926 the house was sold to Thomas Hardcastle and was purchased by the current owners in 1997 on the death of Hardcastle's son.

Duchess of Devonshire

Some women to have held the title Duchess of Devonshire, as wives of the Duke of Devonshire, include: