ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, an urban district in the Newton parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 4 m. S. of Wigan, on the Great Central railway. Pop. (1901) 18,687. The district is rich in minerals, and has large collieries, and a colliery company’s institute; iron goods are manufactured.
ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE, a market-town and municipal and parliamentary borough of Lancashire, England, on the river Tame, a tributary of the Mersey, 185 m. N. W. by N. from London and 6½ E. from Manchester. Area, 1346 acres. Pop. (1891) 40,486; (1901) 43,890. It is served by the London & North-Western and the Lancashire & Yorkshire railways (Charlestown station), and by the Great Central (Park Parade station). The church of St Michael is Perpendicular, but almost wholly rebuilt. In the vicinity are barracks. The Old Hall, or manor house of the Asshetons, remains in an altered form, with an ancient prison adjoining, and the name of Gallows Meadow, still preserved, recalls the summary execution of justice by the lords of the manor. In the vicinity of Ashton a few picturesque old houses remain among the numerous modern residences. Stamford Park, presented by Lord Stamford, is shared by the towns of Ashton and Stalybridge, which extends across the Tame into Cheshire. A technical school, school of art and free library, and several hospitals are maintained. Chief among industries are cotton-spinning, hat-making and iron-founding and machinery works; and there are large collieries in the neighbourhood. The parliamentary borough, which returns one member, extends into Cheshire. The corporation consists of a mayor, 8 aldermen and 24 councillors.
The derivation from the Saxon æsc (ash) and tun (an enclosed place) accounts for the earliest orthography Estun. The addition subtus lineam is found in ancient deeds and is due to the position of the place below the line or boundary of Cheshire, which once formed the frontier between the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia. The manor was granted to Roger de Poictou by William I., but before the end of his reign came to the Greslets as part of the barony of Manchester. It was held by the Asshetons from 1335 to 1515, when it passed by marriage to the Booths of Dunham Massey, and is now held by the earl of Stamford, the representative of that family. The lord of the manor still holds the ancient court-leet and court-baron half-yearly in May and November, in which cognizance is taken of breaches of agreement among the tenants, especially concerning the repair of roads and cultivation of lands. The place had long enjoyed the name of borough, but it was not till 1847 that a charter of incorporation was granted. Under the Reform Act (1832) it returns one member. One of the markets dates back to 1436. The ancient industry was woollen, but soon after the invention of the spinning frame the cotton trade was introduced, and as early as 1769 the weaving of ginghams, nankeens and calicoes was carried on, and the weaving of cotton yarn by machinery soon became the staple industry. A chapel or church existed here as early as 1261-1262.
ASH WEDNESDAY, in the Western Church, the first day of Lent (q.v.), so called from the ceremonial use of ashes, as a symbol of penitence, in the service prescribed for the day. The custom, which is ultimately based on the penance of “sackcloth and ashes” spoken of by the prophets of the Old Testament, has been dropped in those of the reformed Churches which still observe the fast; but it is retained in the Roman Catholic Church, the day being known as dies cinerum (day of ashes) or dies cineris et cilicii (day of ash and sackcloth). The ashes, obtained by burning the palms or their substitutes used in the ceremonial of the previous Palm Sunday, are placed in a vessel on the altar before High Mass. The priest, vested in a violet cope, prays that God may send His angel to hallow the ash, that it become a remedium salubre for all penitents. After another prayer the ashes are thrice sprinkled with holy water and thrice censed. Then the priest invites those present to approach and, dipping his thumb in the ashes, marks them as they kneel with the sign of the cross on the forehead (or in the case of clerics on the place of tonsure), with the words: Memento, homo, quid pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris (Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shall return). The celebrant himself either sprinkles the ash on his own head in silence, or receives it from the priest of highest dignity present.
This ceremony is derived from the custom of public penance in the early Church, when the sinner to be reconciled had to appear in the congregation clad in sackcloth and covered with ashes (cf. Tertullian, De Pudicitia, 13). At what date this use was extended to the whole congregation is not known. The phrase dies cinerum appears in the earliest extant copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, and it is probable that the custom was already established by the 8th century. The Anglo-Saxon homilist Aelfric, in his Lives of the Saints (996 or 997), refers to it as in common use; but the earliest evidence of its authoritative prescription is a decree of the synod of Beneventum in 1091.
Of the reformed Churches the Anglican Church alone marks the day by any special service. This is known as the Commination service, its distinctive element being the solemn reading of “the general sentences of God’s cursing against sinners, gathered out of the seven and twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy, and other places of Scripture.” The lections for the day are the same as in the Roman Church (Joel ii. 12, &c., and Matt. vi. 16, &c.). In the American Prayer Book the office of Commination is omitted, with the exception of the three concluding prayers, which are derived from the prayers and anthems said or sung during the blessing and distribution of the ashes according to the Sarum Missal. The ceremonial of the ashes was not proscribed in England at the Reformation; it was indeed enjoined by a proclamation of Henry VIII. (February 26, 1538) and again in 1550 under Edward VI.; but it had fallen into complete disuse by the beginning of the 17th century.
See Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexikon, and Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (3rd ed.), s. “Aschermittuoch”; L. Duchesne, Christian Worship, trans. by M.L. McClure (London, 1904).