Ashford

Ashford is a market town of the Reach on the banks of the river Cockleswent, seat of House Ashford, and it gives its name to the great tourney at Ashford Meadow around which The Hedge Knight, the first of the Tales of Dunk and Egg, is built. That novella, set nearly a century before A Game of Thrones, gathers knights and princes from across the Seven Kingdoms to the meadow beneath the town, where pavilions rise along the riverbank for jousts held in honor of Lord Ashford's young daughter, the fair maid of Ashford. The town itself is a modest place of the northern Reach, its castle and fields typical of the fertile country the Tyrells rule. In the wider histories, Ashford is also remembered as the site of a battle fought during Robert's Rebellion, a generation before the main series begins.