were one hundred and forty-nine people at West Yoke, one hundred and twenty-three at Hodsoll Street and one hundred and sixteen at or in the vicinity of Ash Street. There had latterly been some new building and the parish now harboured a hundred and fifty houses, of which seven were unoccupied; another was being built, at Berry’s Maple. Over the previous thirty years, Ash had added to its housing stock at the average rate of one house every two years. In recent years, the rate has been rather higher.
   The parish had continued to grow a little more cosmopolitan; there were now between two and three times as many people born outside the county as there had been in 1841. The resident farmers were down to eleven in number and they were mostly smallholders. Only three, those at Ash Place, Terry’s Lodge and West Yoke, were working more than a hundred acres and only one of the three was a

native of Kent. The bailiffs had increased to five and they, between them, seem to have looked after Idley, North Ash, Tuner's, Berry’s Maple and Gooses farms and the land that went with the White Swan.
   Overall, the numbers engaged in agriculture in one way or another had fallen slightly, a fact which may only reflect improvements in farm equipment and consequential progress on the long trek to mechanisation. Neither this small decrease nor the galaxy of bailiffs wholly discount the possibility that Ash was enjoying something of an Indian summer. That, if it was so, may have been attributable to the enlargement of its farms, to its proximity to growing centres of population, especially to the ?Wen?, and to the fact that it was still a hop-growing parish and hop-growing throughout the country was not far off its zenith.¹¹ Moreover, the early eighteen-seventies were