What used to be 2 villages, and a farm on a crossroads, have now merged into a small town with the gaps between them filled by houses. It is a popular place for commuters to live in as it is next to the M1\M18 motorways, and the A57 and is also the focus of many bus routes. Rother Valley and Ulley Country Parks lie on Aston's borders so it's certainly handy for sailing\fishing\mountain biking, etc.

At the time of the Domesday book (1086) Aston was called Estone (east farmstead) and Aughton was Hacstone (oak-tree farmstead) and had a combined value of about £1 (1 pound sterling!). This was way down on their pre Norman invasion value of £3.50 (all of England was assessed as having a taxable value of £73,000. Today in 2005 the UK GDP is over £1,000,000,000,000 - which shows what 1000 years of inflation and economic growth will do! The Norman subjugation of England devastated its economy in a way only matched by the Black Death some 300 years later, and that killed about 1/3 of the population of Europe. About 60 people lived here in 1066.
In 1801 it was still only around 600. By 1871 it had leapt to 1,700 as coal mining, steel making etc. drew in workers. In 1991 the parish population was circa 15,000. Since 2000 there have been numerous housing developments so the population will have grown.

Swallownest is named after the Swallow family who had a farm on the site. It is not listed in the Domesday book and only came into existence in the 18th century and even in 1840 consisted of only 10 houses. Today some of the original stone farm buildings survive, but Swallownest is now mainly modern housing estates, with more being built at the time of writing (2005). The grave of Bill Swallow though, who gave his name to the place, used to be in the local cemetary (though I can't find it!).