had arrived in Ash as a farm labourer about the middle of the century. He seems to have spent much of his earlier working life in Wrotham, but with forays into Shoreham, where he was too late to see Samuel Palmer at work, and Trottiscliffe. He looks to have been, in his new venture, the first landlord of the present Green Man. Times were changing and his son James, who lived at home, was an engineer.
   Since its custom comes mainly from Ash, the old timber-framed house called the Anchor and Hope calls for a passing mention and only no more because, like its neighbour, Rumney Farm, it is actually situate in the parish of Stansted. Not so the White Swan Inn, at the other extremity of Ash Street, which is of the marrow and bone of Ash and has been for many centuries.
   In the twenty years that followed the departure of William Sharp, none of the licensees of the Swan stayed for long. By 1817, George Stoneham had been replaced by Samuel Arnold and he, four years

later, had given way to Edward Porter. S. Hood took over about 1828, but remained only some three years. A very different pattern was set with the arrival, about 1831, of Richard Wakeman. There were to be Wakemans at the Swan for many years to come.
   Richard Wakeman was an Ash man born and bred, though his wife Martha was one of Ash’s rare immigrants from distant parts, being a native of Ludlow in Shropshire. When the Wakemans came to the Swan, they were both in their late thirties; there were then three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Martha, to be followed later by another daughter, Rebecca, and a son, Mark. Thirty years on, Richard, now a widower, was combining hospitality with the farming of twenty-nine acres, a considerable extension of the nine acres that he had originally taken over.
   After Wakeman’s time, his eldest daughter, Elizabeth,