crafts were closely allied to agriculture or village. traders who clothed, shod, fed or quenched the thirst of the parishioners. Details as to occupations come mostly from entries made after 1700; those for earlier years are singularly uninformative. In the higher social ranks, the few ‘esquires’ who figure were usually either transitory visitors to the parish or owners or occupiers of Ash Place, now called Ash Manor, during the vintage years that followed its building in the reign of Charles I. Although the words ‘of South Ash’ frequently occur, usually in relation to the Hodsolls of South Ash Manor, there is only on one occasion a clear reference to a house by name; this, the pleasant Terry’s Lodge, is now on alien soil.
   Assuming a modest increase in the number of inhabitants during the first hundred years, it seems likely that over the full period covered by the registers the population about doubled. At the time of the Hearth Tax assessment of 1664, which was for Ash cum Ridley, there were seventy-one houses in the two parishes; taking an estimated average of five occupants per house, there would have been upwards of 350 people, of whom the great majority must have lived in Ash.⁵   A more authentic figure comes with the first national census, taken in 1801, when there were 472 people in the parish. Living space was no problem.

   The number of baptisms recorded is 2,357. From 1560 to 1539 the average number per year is rather more than five; only in one year is there none. From 1600 to 1649 the yearly average is nearly eight, but the true average would certainly have been more. From 1650 to 1699 the number is about ten, which falls minimally to between nine and ten for 1700 to 1749. It increases to nearly twelve in the second half of the seventeenth century and for 1800 to 1812 is nearly fourteen.
   Only four adult baptisms are recorded as such. The first, of ‘Elis. Wood, Adult’, was in 1739, the others being in 1762 or 1763. ‘Stephen Fautelle, a Negroe’, who was christened in 1739, may have been an adult, but it is perhaps more probable that he was a young servant or pageboy.
   The first twins, though they were not described as such, seem to have been Henry and. Edward., sons of John Abard, who were christened in 1561. They were followed by Thomas and Joan, ‘twynes’ of John Walter, in 1597 and ‘two twinnes of Kittles’ in 1611. Over the whole period there were some twenty-five pairs of twins; they turned up on average about once every ten years. Amongst other old Ash families on occasion thus blessed were those of Best, Goodwin (twice), Middleton (thrise) and