anticipated and the commissioners already had before them the plan of the new house. Implementation of the plan would not, they found, be of any detriment, inconvenience or disadvantage to the rectory or succeeding rectors of Ash; on the contrary, succeeding rectors would receive manifest benefit by the building of the house proposed. John Pery had obviously organised matters very nicely and, not surprisingly, the Bishop endorsed the commissioners’ report with the words ‘Let a lycence pass’.²⁴  The rector wasted no time in proceeding with the work and in due course was able to record, appropriately enough on the first page of a new Baptismal register that he had not long since opened, that ‘Johannes Pery A.M. Rectoris Domum de integro extruxit Anno Dom 1739’.
   Pery’s son John, who was to succeed him as rector, was born about 1740, but apparently was not christened at Ash. It may be that the family had been living away from the parish while their new home was being built and that John junior’s arrival preceded their return. In such case, the first child to be born in the new rectory would have been Jane Pery, in 1741. She was 

followed by Multon, in 1742, Ann, in 1743, Elizabeth Beale, in 1745, and Thomas Lambard, in 1747. John Pery was evidently a man of few words; the entries for most of his children in the Baptismal register simply names their parents as ‘John & Jane Pery’. Perhaps for the same reason, a prefix of gentility is seldom found in the registers of his time for any of his flock, not that the opportunity for such would very frequently have arisen.
   In 1754, Dr Pery, as he now was, became also vicar of Farningham²⁵  and thereafter held both livings until his death. With this increased burden, he invoked the assistance of the Revd Charles Whitehead, then vicar of Cudham, who on one occasion in 1755 and frequently from 1758 onwards is found acting as officiating minister at Ash weddings and who presumably also participated in other Ash services. It is possible that initially Whitehead hacked over from Cudham as occasion required, but the fact that his son Thomas was buried at Ash in 1762 and another son, Gervase, was christened there in the following year suggest that, at any rate by that time, he had taken up