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One of the family of thirteen children was
Solomon Wallis, born in 1737, who was to carry on the tailoring business
and himself to attain a ripe old age. In 1780 Solomon was living near the
corner of the Ash road and Pease Hill, where Wallis Terrace now stands; he
was then a tenant of Mrs Umfrey, the lady who also owned the site of
Scotgrove. After her death, Solomon bought the property, upwards of an
acre in extent, which in 1792 was described as ‘The Homestall, Cottages,
Gardens, Orchard &e’. In the latter year the whole was in hand,
which suggests that Solomon may then have been about to pull down the old
cottages and to build the Terrace now honoured with his name.14
The last of the family name to have carried on the trade
seems to have been John Wallis, who at the time of the 1851 census was
still living in one of the cottages that old Solomon had built; he was
then aged. seventy-eight and described as a retired taylor. For years,
however, the tailoring business had been carried on by one James Buggs,
who lived next door to John Wallis and was probably related to the Wallis
family. Buggs was a native of Meopham, but had long lived in Ash. In 1841
the business was evidently flourishing, for Buggs |
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was then employing a young assistant, William Accleton,
who lived ‘over the shop’; he it was who subsequently married Mary
Oliver and removed to West Yoke. Ten years later, the business was still
in being, but somewhat diversified; Buggs was then a ‘Master Tailor and
Post Master’, being perhaps the first in Ash to fill the latter office.
In another of the cottages lived Amelia Hawley, a dressmaker. The Terrace
was not at that time known by the name of Wallis. Even more appropriately,
it was called Bodkin Row.
The tailoring business seems to have closed during the
following decade and in 1861 Buggs, now in his middle sixties, simply
described himself as ‘Post-master’. Although there were by then three
ladies in the Terrace plying their needles as dressmakers that had not
saved ‘Bodkin Row’, which this time was differentiated as ‘Great
Golds’, a variant presumably of ‘Great Gowles’ or 'Gowls', the name
of the farmhouse opposite. There was no longer a Wallis in the parish and
by 1871 there was no Buggs either.
Newcomers to the parish during the eighteenth century, and |