Ashford (place)

In addition to being a village in Eire, my road atlas of the United Kingdom lists five Ashfords in England, and I would imagine that with the American penchant for giving places British names (especially in New England) that there are a fair few Ashfords in the US.

The largest English Ashford seems to be the one in Kent, which is located about 15 miles from Canterbury, the ancient capital of the county, and a similar distance from Folkestone, a port town which is the British end of the channel tunnel. A quick search on Google has provided a few fascinating facts about Ashford:

• The population of the town is approximately 53,000 as at the end of the 20th century.
• The town grew to prominence in the late 19th Century as a railway town, building and maintaining steam locomotives for the London-Dover railway. The town is still important to steam enthusiasts and was instrumental in the recent regeneration of the South Kent Steam Railway.
• Trains are still important to the town, and during the 1990s the railway station was upgraded to "international" status when it became a terminal for the Eurostar passenger service between London and Paris/Brussels.

Apart from that it has to be said that Ashford seems to be a fairly ordinary small satellite town of London. Still, if any of the 50k residents of Ashford should ever be reading this feel free to correct my impression of the place if I'm wrong.