Asterley is a village in Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Its name, derived from Old English, means "the eastern clearing in the forest".

It was historically a township

Township (England)

In England, a township is a local division or district of a large parish containing a village or small town usually having its own church...

 of the large parish of Pontesbury

Pontesbury

Pontesbury is a large village and civil parish in Shropshire and is approximately eight miles southwest of the county town of Shrewsbury. The village of Minsterley is just over a mile further southwest. The A488 road runs through the village, on its way from Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle...

, and is still part of the civil parish

Civil parish

In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation and, where they are found, the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties...

 of Pontesbury. There is a ruinous brick church in the village, in addition to a Primitive Methodist chapel, built in 1834. In the 19th century the village was the centre of a small-scale coal mining

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 industry.

Outside the village is a rare survival, a windmill

Windmill

A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...

built in 1809. It was restored in the 1980s.