blacksmiths, James Gladdish, Thomas Wadlow and Richard Bishop, two publicans, John Wilkins and Thomas Goodwin, a wheelwright, Edward Porter, a carpenter, William Rhodes, a shoemaker, William Crowhurst and a thatcher, William Goodwin. There were also two servants, one travelling tinker and another traveller who was not a tinker. It is rather unusual to find a Goodwin who was not a thatcher, but would have been much more so to find a thatcher who was not a Goodwin.
   Finally as to baptisms comes the matter of sex discrimination. There were some twelve hundred and four christenings of males and eleven hundred and forty-eight christenings of females, with five others for which the gender is not stated. In so far as the record goes, more girls than boys were christened from 1560 to 1599, but for each subsequent fifty years, as also for the

opening years of the nineteenth century, boys  always outnumbered girls.
   About sixty-five different boys’ names and eighty- one girls’ names were used; ‘that at least is the conclusion after rationalising some very odd spellings. Second Christian names did not come into fashion in Ash until about the year 1800. Over the whole period of the registers, only nineteen second names were given and eleven of those belong to the last thirteen years. A few were obviously family names, of which an early example, from 1759, is the ‘Packer’ in ‘Sarah Packer, d. of Wm. Buddicom, Mariner & Jane his W.’. That entry is also of interest by reason of the father’s vocation. Although but a few miles from the port of Gravesend, Ash was not much resorted to by seafaring men. There was a nautical phase in the Hodsoll family, but Mr Buddicom was the only mariner to be so