as alas for ‘Chalk Croft’ and, at least in part, for ‘Rose Chalk Field’. ‘Clam Acre Field’ was clayey and ‘Pudding Dean’ sticky, both rather nasty. ‘Stony Brake Field’ would have been hard work.
   Mode of use gave rise to many instances of ‘The Hop Garden’ or ‘Hop Garden Field’, which latter might be wholly or partly under hops or, like ‘The Old Hop Garden’, not at all. Very frequents too, were ‘The Orchard’ or ‘Orchard Field’ and, for pasture land, ‘The Mead’ or, sometimes, ‘The Meadow’. In like category were ‘Tare Croft’ and ‘Tare Field’, ‘Barley Dale Field’, ‘Bean Field’ and ‘Kitchen Field’, the last mentioned being where the vegetables for the farmhouse were grown. Any doubt as to the provenance of ‘Langley Field’ at West Yoke is resolved by the 1839 Tithe

agreement, in which the name became ‘Long ley Field’. Amongst the most exotic and. surely the eldest of Ash field names was ‘The Vineyard’, an eleven-acre meadow on Ash Place Farm that faced across to the Swan at the northerly end of Ash Street.
   Vegetation rather than cultivation prompted the names of Ash’s two ‘Thistly’ Fields, of ‘Goss’ i.e. gorse, Croft on Oliver’s Farm and of Brambly Ham on Turner’s farm. Although Mr Cox’s land at West Yoke sloped down to the upper reaches of the Fawkham Valley, it may be over imaginative to connect with the river that once flowed there, possibly into historic tines, his ‘Great Reed Field’, ‘Apple Tree Reed Field.’ and. ‘Loveliest Reed Field’. The charm of that last name is, most likely, deceptive. It may be