business, together with Oliver's Farm. He had married Mary Easten of Swanscombe, and in their case there was no dearth of sons nor, for that matters of daughters. George was usually referred to as a butcher but, at any rate in his later years, he described himself as a farmer; he was the last Oliver so to do.
   Frederick, a son of George, was already functioning as a butcher at Oliver’s Farm in his father’s lifetime and, although he was not the eldest son, it was Frederick who succeeded to the business in the eighteen-forties. In 1851 he was a master butcher employing a man and a boy; the man was his younger brother Edward, a ‘jurnaman butcher’, and the boy his nephew, John Oliver, who ran the errands. It may be doubted whether they were all fully employed. For some years now, competition had been encountered from a butcher’s shop opened by William Russell and more conveniently placed in Ash Street; this was the shop which in its later life was operated for many years by one of the Rogers family and survived until it was replaced in modern times by Ash’s present sub-Post office.
   The ensuing decade was an unhappy one for Frederick Oliver, for he lost his wife, Eliza, and he lost his business. In 1861, he and Edward were still together, but both were working as agricultural labourers. Ten years after, Edward had removed to lodgings and Frederick

was all alone, although he was then described as a butcher. Perhaps he was helping at the Russell’s a shop, where by that time William Russell junior was carrying on the trade while his father engaged in some farming. The farming butcher was no doubt a successful one.
   John Oliver, the erstwhile errand boy, was a son of Frederick’s brother Henry, who had been left a widower with four small children; against the odds, Oliver menfolk more often than not outlived their wives, though few of their marriages were cut so tragically short as this one. Henry, who was a journeyman wheelwright, probably spent most of his working life in the employment of the Porters of Johnson’s Farm and. was certainly so engaged in 1861 when Frances, widow of Edward Porter, was gallantly carrying on the business of a ‘wheelwrite’ after her husband’s death. During the next decade, Henry remarried and. began to work on his own account. His son John established himself as a smith and farrier and another son, Henry, set up as a blacksmith. By 1871, John and Henry junior were both at Butlers Point, not necessarily in partnership but probably sharing the forge there. With Henry senior continuing as wheelwright, the Olivers had more or less cornered the trades of West Yoke. The youngest Oliver