wife and children and his elder brother, James, who was a cripple. Then, or soon after, Henry was the owner of a steam-thrashing machine, which he operated in partnership with his brother. The sight and sound of this monster making its way along the parish lanes, preceded by a man with a red flag, must have been an interesting experience for the local inhabitants and an exciting one for the local bulls.
   In early Victorian tines, the public house at Hodsoll Street was of the most humble of its kind. In 1839, it was described as the ‘Green Man Beer Shop & Garden’ and, two years later, as the ‘Green Man ale house’. The occupants then were Charles Leonard, alias Leanard or Lenoard, who was a native of ‘Adlow’, as the saying went, his wife Sarah, who was an Ash girl, and some of their numerous but by no means completed family. Beer must have been something of a sideline, for Leonard was primarily a bricklayer. He was still running the ‘beerhouse’ in 1847, but although he was around

and laying bricks in 1851, the census returns for that year make no reference to the Green Man, as such. The census of 1861 is equally silent and, by that time, Leonard was gone also. It could well be that for some of the middle years of the century Hodsoll Street went thirsty and that such deficiency continued until it was made good, some time later in the eighteen—sixties, by one Solomon Crowhurst.. Crowhurst, who for a good few years had been farming between thirty and forty acres at Hodsoll Street, was described in 1867 as ‘beer retailer and hop grower’.
   It was perhaps the building of the new Green Man on the other side of the Green that put Solomon Crowhurst out of business. By 1871, he was neither selling beer nor growing hops, having joined the ranks of the agricultural labourers.
   Quite different was the story of Robert Bennett, the licensee in 1871 of the Green Man, which was now described as a ‘publick house’.  Bennett, & native of Meopham,