in an agricultural trade carrying on a little farming
as well and probably Johnson’s Farm was always small in acres. Later in
the century, and until the eighteen-sixties, its modest nineteen or twenty
acres were being farmed by the Porter family, who were primarily
wheelwrights. However, the farm name may have a much later provenance.
From the nineteenth century census returns can be traced
something of the chequered career of a certain Richard Johnson, a native
of Birling or, as he apparently preferred to spell it, ‘Burling’. In
1851, he was the bailiff of South Ash Farm, working three hundred and
eighty acres and employing, no doubt vicariously, twenty-two men and three
boys. By 1861, he had shed this considerable load and was an agricultural
labourer living in Ash Street. At some time during the following decade he
enjoyed a modest resurgence in fortune, |
|
for he reappears in 1871 as a farmer of eighteen acres
at West Yoke. That holding may very well have been Johnson’s Farm and he
the Johnson from whom it took its name. Alternatively, that may have been
Johnson’s Farm, but he not the Johnson from whom it took its name. The
only remaining possibility, not a very likely one, is that it was not
Johnson’s Farm.
Of much greater significance than the Johnsons in the
agricultural history of Ash were the Middletons, who were in the parish
for the whole, or virtually the whole, of the period covered by the
ancient registers. During that time, fifty-five of their number were
christened, eighteen were married and thirty-five were buried at Ash. No
doubt there were other such occasions ‘forgot to be registered’.
The first evidence of a Middleton presence comes |