At that time, George was living with his wife Sarah and young Alfred at one of the Beech cottages and Alfred was assisting his father at the school. A Mary ‘Elcome’, which was how George spelt the family name, a widow of four score years who was sojourning in one of Mr Lance’s almshouses at Turner’s Oak, was no doubt George’s old mother. Alfred’s school job was not a permanency, but he remained perpetual census taker for Ridley and the eastern reaches of Ask until at least 1871.
   John and Mary Elcombe’s youngest son, John, did not attain George’s distinction. He, in 1851, was an agricultural labourer living at the Old Malthouse which, incredibly, had a population of forty-two and accommodated nine households. John’s menage, which included a three year old grandson, contributed a total of nine. The family tended to be peripatetic, within the usual limited range, and the six of John’s children then at the Malthouse were variously born at Ridley, Longfield, Hartley and Ash. One of the sons, another John, continued there for many years. By 1871, when he was still in occupation, the numbers had fallen somewhat, but there was then accommodation for ten families, one unit being vacant. The Old Malthouse still remains, but things have changed there somewhat.

    The shoemaking tradition had been carried on by one James Elcombe who, in 1805, had married an Ash girl, Elizabeth Wickenden. He was still carrying on his trade, at Ash Street, in early Victorian times. His wife seems to have departed into service at West Yoke with an aged farmer, William Andrus, who since the eighteen-twenties had worked Turner’s Farm and what had once been the Mliddleton farm at West Yoke.
   It fell to one of James and Elizabeth’s sons, William, who was born in 1810, to achieve what might be called the family treble; he in his time was a schoolmaster, a shoemaker and a parish clerk. Likewise he enjoyed the fringe benefit of census taking, acting as enumerator for Hartley in 1861 and 1871. He, too, perambulated the district in his early years; Fawkham, Kingsdown, Ash and Hartley all figured amongst his children's’ birthplaces. Whether as a typical or an exceptional Elcombe - or, as be called himself, ‘Elcomb’ - he merits a brief biography.
   William and his wife Rebecca, also a native of Ash, settled in Fawkham after their marriage and it was there that he filled, for a short time, the role of village schoolmaster, That was not a job with a future, since in 1841 a school was built at Hartley