Ashfield's population is highly multicultural with the majority of the area's dwellings being a mixture of mainly post-war low-rise flats (apartment blocks) and Federation-era detached houses.

Wangal country was believed to be centred on modern-day Concord and stretched east to the swampland of Long Cove Creek (now known as Hawthorne Canal).

The land was heavily wooded at the time with tall eucalypts covering the higher ground and a variety of swampy trees along Iron Cove Creek.

This route later became the main artery of the expanding Greater Sydney and, as the northern boundary of what is now Ashfield, dictated early British settlement in the area.

However, the opening of the Sydney-Parramatta railway line that year, with Ashfield as one of its six original stations, led to a population explosion.

But by the time of World War I, the suburb had fallen out of favour and the rich residents had mostly headed for the North Shore.

Many of the grand homes were knocked down in the 1920s and 1930s and replaced with small art deco blocks of flats or semi-detached houses.

[7] By the 1950s, the population of Ashfield had begun to fall, as it had in many surrounding suburbs, as people moved to newer houses on larger blocks of land on the urban fringe.

On the other side of Frederick Street was the Peek Freans biscuit factory, the tower of which was (and still is) a familiar site to passing motorists on Parramatta Road.

[11][12] Ashfield is the terminus for one Transit Systems bus services: 464 (to Mortlake, via Croydon Park, Burwood, and Concord).

The Strathfield-Newtown route is the most important of these, passing down Park Lane and Robert Street towards Summer Hill where it links with the Cooks River to Iron Cove Greenway Corridor providing access to those two popular local cycleways.

It produced notable students including Pamela Travers (author of Mary Poppins) and tennis champion Daphne Akhurst.

On Lapish Avenue on the western end of town still stands a street scape of five Art Deco Sydney Bungalow styled semi-detached pairs and a block of units at each end that were designed and built during World War II as speculative housing[27] the full history of the land has been meticulously research and documented.

A number of these properties are listed on the Register of the National Estate including Amesbury, Ashfield Castle, Buninyong, Glenore, Taringa and two unnamed Gothic houses at 177-179 Norton Street.

It was part of Elizabeth Underwood's 1838 subdivision that gave rise to the village of Ashfield and was reserved by her for the purpose of 'the erection of an Episcopalian Church'.

[30] In 1842, neighbouring landowner Robert Campbell made an acre of land between Liverpool Road and Norton Street available for a Methodist chapel and schoolhouse.

Services quickly outgrew the school's small chapel and in 1894, the Vincentian Fathers started building a church in Bland Street, opposite Bethlehem.

Designed by Catholic Architects Sheerin and Hennessy in a grand Romanesque style, St Vincents was completed in 1907.

[33] The Baptists held their first service in the School of Arts building on the corner of Liverpool Road and Holden Street.

In 1937, they sold the building, which was knocked down and replaced with a cinema, and moved to their current site on the corner of Holden and Norton Streets.

It is Gothic in style with a landmark tower, an impressive street facade and a sympathetically designed adjoining hall.

From the late 1870s, meetings were held in Ashfield in support of a new 106-acre reserve in the district for the enjoyment of locals at a time when housing subdivision was rapidly increasing.

[35] At the present time, with a rapidly growing population, it was excessively urgent that land should be reserved for a metropolitan park.

It features large phoenix palms, a war memorial, a children's playground with a statue of Mary Poppins (in recognition of the author PL Travers who lived nearby between 1918–1924),[36] a monument to International Mother Language Day built by former artist-in-residence Ian Marr and the Bangladeshi community, a statue of Philippines national hero Jose Rizal, a sporting field and one of Sydney's oldest bowling clubs.

[38] The area's major sporting ground is Pratten Park, home of the Western Suburbs grade cricket club in summer and used by the Canterbury District Soccer Football Association in winter.

Thirning Villa, located within the park, is home to the Ashfield District Historical Society and an artist in residence sponsored by the local council.

For federal elections, Ashfield is part of the electoral division of Grayndler, currently held by Labor's Anthony Albanese.

Ashfield also had a higher than average number of people renting (50.5%) compared to houses owned outright (22.3%) or being purchased (22.8%).

In front of Thirning Villa is Ashfield's version of the Rosetta Stone, made by former artist-in-residence Ian Marr and featuring a passage from the Iliad by Homer in twelve different community languages.

[64] Ashfield is the site of the first official Australian cricket pitch, which was established in 1875 and originally owned and leased by a local butcher.