Aswardby is not in the Domesday book and the earliest documentary reference to the parish is in 1195. Nevertheless the name of the village is Scandinavian and comes from the Old Danish meaning 'Aswarth's farmstead or village', and it is likely that a small village existed at the time of the Norman conquest. {1} In the Middle Ages the village was returned in tax documents with Harrington and it is not possible to disentangle the two. In 1334 Aswardby and Harrington had a value of £1 15s.4¾d. in the Lay Subsidy returns, which is a little more than the average for the wapentake. {2} In the Poll Tax returns of 1377 there are 63 tax payers in Aswardby and Harrington. {3} In 1563 there was a population of 18 households in the village. {4} By the early eighteenth century there were 12 families recorded by the incumbent in 1705 although this had fallen to seven families and four poor widows by 1723. {5} By 1801 the population was 59 and in 1811, 54 which would suggest that it was about the same size as it had been in the early eighteenth century. The population had risen to 91 by 1841 but had dropped again to about 60 or 70 by the end of the nineteenth century. {6} There are linear boundaries, enclosures and ditches visible as cropmarks and earthworks in aerial photographs within Aswardby Park to the south of the hamlet that are probably the remains of medieval settlement in this area. {7}