the last time with Charles James Lambarde, Rector from 1894 until his death in 1909. He was followed by Harold Barclay Hennell, father of Tom Hennell the poet and painter, who remained until 1942. His successor, the Revd James Vigo, was the last rector to live in the house that John Pery built and the first to live in the present Rectory.
   The commissioners of 1739 had rightly thought that succeeding rectors of Ash would receive manifest benefit by the building of an house in accordance with the plan laid before them. The parsonage so built was both handsome and commodious, but after two 

hundred years had passed its size was to tell against it. Soon after the Second War a new Rectory was built in a corner of the grounds, the balance being redressed by replacing an inconveniently large house by an inconveniently small one. The Old Rectory, as it has since been known, became for the next thirty years the home of the McCarthy family, happily retaining close links with Ash church. The appearance of the house has not greatly changed with the years and the elevations remain much as planned for ‘the intended new house’. The view across the haw-haw to the wooded heights of Ridley is as lovely as ever.