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in 1700 could have been the wife of Abraham Oliver and
the mother of a Joseph Oliver ('Joseph I’) who’ two years later, is
found described as ‘butcher of ye borough of Ash’. Joseph I had made
his bow in 1693, when the eldest of his family by his first wife,
Winifred, was christened. More than possibly, his second wife may have
been that ‘Mary Oliver of Hartley’ whose ninety-nine years win the
prize for longevity in Ash’s ancient registers.
When Joseph I died in 1731, his eldest surviving son, Joseph
(‘Joseph II’), presumably took charge of the family business.
Certainly Joseph II’s son of the same name ('Joseph III’) was a
butcher; so was another son, Thomas, but he moved to Orpington. Joseph III
was also, indubitably, the tenant of Oliver’s Farm. It is inherently
unlikely that he was the first of the family to become so.
In 1763, three years before his father’s death, Joseph III
had married an Ash girl, Barbara Porter; probably in consequence of the
beneficence of the Revd Samuel Atwood, both could write, an attribute not
all that usual at the time. Joseph’s courtship is not likely to have
taken him far afield. Although it was not until later in the |
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century that the Porters took over Johnson’s Farm,
they had before that occupied an eight-acre smallholding by Chapel Wood
road which was, substantially, the property that was subsequently to
provide the annual ten guineas payable under James Lance’ s charity.
The marriage of Joseph III and Barbara Porter was a fruitful
one. Barbara bore ten children, most of whom survived. The first born,
being a son, was called Joseph (‘Joseph IV’).
Joseph III combined with the butcher’s business some quite
substantial farming. Although only eleven odd acres went with Oliver’s
Farm, he was tenant of nearly eighty acres to the south of Billet Hill,
initially from the Selby family and then, from about 1789, from Mr and Mrs
Tasker. This land had no farmhouse, but its barn and yard were at the east
end of Billet Hill, facing across to the White Swan; it must have been a
precursor, at least in part, of the modern Swan Farm. Up to about 1782,
Oliver was also working Old House Farm and so another seventy-five acres,
but the tenancy was then terminated, probably to enable a sale of the farm
with vacant |