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Ashford is a town and suburb of London located almost entirely in the Surrey borough of Spelthorne, but with a small section lying within the London Borough of Hounslow, England. Mostly residential, Ashford is WSW of Charing Cross, London, forms part of the London commuter belt, with a minor stop on the Waterloo to Reading Line (which has two branch lines) and has a long commercial high street. It is centred south of London Heathrow Airport, to which a portion of its economy relates, including business premises relating to aviation and the distribution of air freight – the main cargo depot being next to an adjoining village, Stanwell. More usually referred to as Ashford, Middlesex to distinguish it from the larger town of Ashford, Kent, since 1965 when Middlesex County Council was dissolved the town's wards are officially in Ashford, Surrey and for example the current railway services provider uses the present or past county variously throughout its stations and trains. A leading gymnastics club, HMP Bronzefield and one of the sites of Brooklands College are in the town. Ashford Hospital is narrowly within Stanwell and began as Ashford's workhouse. Ashford Common has a parade of shops and is a more residential ward that includes part of the Queen Mary Reservoir and all of its related water treatment works, which is contiguous with and subsidiary to the town itself. Ashford consists of relatively low density low and medium rise buildings, none of them being high rise. If excluding apartments (at the last census 27% of the housing stock) most houses are semi-detached. Ashford is defined along its northern edge by a dual carriageway and extends no more than 400m beyond another parallel to the southern boundary. It centrally includes a short section of another and has a driving test centre. Junctions of the UK's motorway network are and from its borders and it has along the two main dual carriageways official dealers of Ford, Citroën and Suzuki. On two of the eight chief compass points the town is buffered by green space which covers just over and includes ''The Princes Club, Bedfont Lakes'' and ''Shortwood Common''. ==Topography== Ashford is in the almost flat alluvial plain formed by the historic courses of the River Thames〔(Surrey ). Natural England. Retrieved 2012-10-12〕 on fairly fertile but gravelly soil〔(UK Soilscapes, a resource from Cranfield University )〕 in centuries past covered by deciduous forest for wood gathering, with clearings of meadow for pasture and to a lesser extent arable farming to supply the London market; sheep grazing continues today around the reservoirs. In common with western fringes of Greater London, gravel commences often within a metre of the surface which has led to 20th century gravel extraction,〔 which has formed the lakes to the north of the railway line. The extreme west is ''Shortwood Common'', partly converted to a recreation ground, Ashford Park School, a cemetery. North of this is the pair of Staines Reservoirs, the other green buffer is ''The Princes Club, Bedfont Lakes'', spanning the northeast border; these areas constitute Metropolitan Green Belt buffers to the country's largest city. The area includes postally much of Queen Mary Reservoir (which covered most of the parish to the south of Littleton and almost none of historic Ashford) named after the wife of George V, Mary of Teck. A large majority of land is devoted to suburban and low-rise urban housing〔(2001 Census: density and land use statistics )〕 — in addition to recreational areas, green belt in part of the Bedfont/Feltham fringe exists in the form of meadows used for walking, horse grazing and equestrianism around Feltham Young Offenders' Institution. A few parks such as the Ashford Reservoirs or Spelthorne Park are remnants of Ashford Common which give the eastern part of the town a reminder of its past status as a grazing common; these include recreation grounds such as Thames Water-sponsored Spelthorne Sports Club and the BP recreation ground.〔(Spelthorne maps, see in Planning section: Maps: Green Belt )〕 In The Clumps, 37 houses in the Ashford post town, which has the postcode TW15, are in the London Borough of Hounslow, Greater London, alongside the Princes Club watersports lakes partly in Ashford post town but mostly in East Bedfont, Feltham post town, London. The other road with this status is the western half of Challenge Road, which has only business addresses.〔(Google map of TW15 versus Greater London boundary )〕〔http://www.royalmail.com/postcode-finder〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ashford, Surrey」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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