that the name ‘Old House’ derived from the ruins at Scotgrove. There was no house still standing on the Old House lands in 1792, but there were a barn and yard belonging to the farm on the southerly side of what is now called Chapel Wood road. To judge from abuttals given in the 1590 settlement, it would seen that the barn and yard may have been on the site of one of two crofts of land that probably faced each other across the road and which, together with a messuage, outhouses, garden and orchard, were included in that settlement, being then in the tenures of William and John Madlowe. It is not improbable that the house in question was the one of sixteenth century or earlier vintage which had once belonged to Thomas Fane and that from it the name of the farm had derived. That name may have originated by way of distinction when New House was built nearby, in Hartley parish. New House Farm may also have once been Lance property, for some of its land lay just to the south of ‘The Channtry’. The New 

House farmhouse which was demolished in the early stages of the New Ash Green development was probably of late seventeenth century date, but there may well have been an earlier house on the same site.^33a
   In the year 1811, James Lance, by now full of years, crowned his family’s age-long association with Ash by founding a parish charity, of which more will be said later. One of those whom he appointed as original trustees of the charity was James Wade, who had lived in Ash for twenty years or more, for most of them as the tenant at Idleigh. Shortly afterwards, certainly by 1815 and maybe two or three years earlier, Wade became the new owner-occupier of the Old House and North Ash farms. he was succeeded about 1829 by another of the same family.³⁴
   At the time of the agreement made in 1839 for the commutation of the parish tithes, the owners and