Ashbury is a village and large civil parish at the upper end (west) of the Vale of White Horse.

Soils are shallow on the chalkland of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the southern part of the parish.

The Neolithic burial site of Wayland's Smithy is in the parish 1 mile (1.6 km) east of the village.

[3] The earliest known record of Ashbury is from 840, when King Æthelwulf of Wessex granted land at Aisshedoune to his minister Duda.

The first free school outside of Crown patronage in the United Kingdom was founded in Ashbury by the curate Thomas Stock in 1777 in collaboration with his colleague Robert Raikes.

[9] In the north-east of the village, which is otherwise almost square, is Kingstone farm and with its large indoor livestock areas employs a small minority of the population.

In the 20th century the artist Martin Travers converted the north transept into a chapel of Saint Hubert in memory of Evelyn, Countess Craven who had lived at Ashdown House in the parish.

[14] Ashbury has a public house, the Rose and Crown Hotel,[15] a 16th-century coaching inn controlled by Arkell's Brewery.