of Ann, who died in 1809 at. the age of forty. This time it was a Hodsoll husband who faced long years alone,
   The Indian summer of the Hodsolls, if they had one, would have been while agriculture was prospering during the Napoleonic Wars. The peace that followed did not bring them plenty and thereafter their days at South Ash were numbered.
   William VI remained owner into and through the eighteen-twenties. During that decade his son, William junior, took over the farm as tenant, but he was never to become lord of South Ash. At the end of 1831, the family estate was put up for sale ‘with the concurrence of the mortgagees of Mr. Hodsoll’; it then comprised the manor and manor house, South Ash and Little Ash Farms, Crowhurst. Farm in Kingsdown and Bakers Farm in Stansted, the whole extending to five hundred and seventy-seven acres.¹⁴
   The purchasers of the South Ash estate were John 

and William Wild, of a family of London vintners.¹⁵
   Much land and the lordship were to remain with the Wild family into the late 20th century. During a large part of that time, South Ash Farm was worked by tenant farmers or, sometimes, by bailiffs. Between the two Wars, a lease of the estate, or part of it, was acquired by Mr G.E. Leavey, who lived at the Manor for a good many years. When the Leaveys left not long after the Second War., the property happily escaped the fate which overtook so many of the landed estates that came on to the market at that time. South Ash Manor became and was long to remain the home of Mr Kenneth Kingston and the hub of one of the major farming enterprises in North-West Kent.
   Although no longer owners, the Hodsolls had continued for some time at South Ash, with William junior working the farm or, at least, the major part of it.¹⁶   He seems to have diversified into surveying.