Berwick St James is a village and civil parish on the River Till in Wiltshire, England, about northwest of Salisbury, on the southern edge of Salisbury Plain. The parish includes the hamlet of Asserton. At the 2001 census the parish had a population of 185, reducing to 142 at the 2011 census. The village High Street is the B3083 road which follows the river: south to Stapleford and the A36 Warminster-Salisbury road, and north to Winterbourne Stoke and the A303 trunk road, which cuts across the north-west of the parish. History Yarnbury Castle, an Iron Age hillfort, is partly within the parish. In the Domesday Book of 1086, estates at Berwick and Asserton were part of Winterbourne Stoke; by the 12th century the village had its present name. Stapleford Castle, a medieval ringwork castle, was just south of the parish at Stapleford. In 1377, Berwick St. James had 80 poll-tax payers and there were 27 at Asserton. Berwick St James manor was held by the Chaworth family from the late 11th century, and was brought to the earls of Lancaster after Maud Chaworth (1282–1322) married Henry, a grandson of Henry III who became 3rd Earl of Lancaster. The manor passed to the Crown in 1399 when Lancaster's Henry Bolingbroke was declared Henry IV. The Wiltshire Victoria County History traces the later owners. Manor Farmhouse, on the village High Street, is late 16th century; Berwick House, to the west of the High Street, is early 19th century. In the 1920s the High Street was part of the A360 Devizes-Salisbury road, which followed the Bourne valley. Sometime before 1958 the main road was redirected onto higher ground further east. Assserton In medieval times, Asserton was a village or hamlet with its own church or chapel, on the east bank of the river, opposite Berwick. In the 14th and 15th centuries it was a separate tithing. In 1557 Asserton manor was granted to James Basset, a courtier to Queen Mary. Asserton House was built in the late 18th century and rebuilt early in the 19th. Lake Down Aerodrome Between 1917 and 1919, downland in the east of the parish on both sides of the A360 was the site of Lake Down Aerodrome, one of several Training Depot Stations created in the area to support the rapid expansion of the Royal Flying Corps. An extension of the Amesbury and Military Camp Light Railway connected