ASTWOOD and ASTWOOD BURY (or BURYSTEAD)
(or ALIZWOOD – ALICE’S WOOD)
ASTWOOD
Astwood was divided into two. The main village south of the Bedford Road and the ancient hamlet of Astwood Bury or Burystead, north of the Bedford Road.
In 1731 the Astwood Estate was sold for £10170 to the Executors of Thomas Trevor, the first Lord Trevor of Bromham. Then it was immediately settled on the second Lord Trevor of Bromham who was created Viscount Hampden.
When he died in 1776 he left the manor in trust for his relative Robert Trevor, Receiver General of the Post Office who owned farms in Crawley at enclosure in 1773.
One farm we know was now known as Manor Farm in East End. This was the Filliol Manor Farm which old William Lowndes had already settled on Elizabeth his daughter of his eldest son Robert, the brother of Richard who inherited the Grange Estate in North Crawley. Elizabeth and her husband John Price conveyed the farm to her uncle William Lowndes of Astwood Bury in 1729. Three years later William sold the farm to Anne dowager Lady Trevor who was the owner of Rokele Manor at Astwood.
It was inherited, with the Astwood Estate by Robert Trevor whose trustees sold it in 1807 to Thomas David Bowell.
Robert Trevor almost certainly owned Lodge Farm in North Crawley as well. The Enclosure Award of 1773 gave him 71 acres between Town Lands, The Crawley Charity and the Cranfield Road.
ASTWOOD BURY
In 1711 Old William Lowndes had arranged the purchase of Astwood Bury with its 360 acres, 17 acres of woods and 4 farmhouses. The historian Browne Willis described the mansion of Astwood Bury as one of the finest mansions in the county.
After old William’s second son’s marriage in St Pauls Cathedral to Margaret Layton in 1711, the estate was settled on William Lowndes of Astwood Bury and his children and he lived there until his death in 1775.
Astwood Bury was left to his grandson William Lowndes Stone but he was so settled in Brightwell in Oxfordshire, that the old mansion with its onerous costs was pulled down in 1799.