1888. The opportunity was taken to engage a successor at the more modest stipend of £4.l0s. per annum. Rebecca lived on into her nineties and the twentieth century. She rests with William and two of their daughters in Hartley churchyard.
   The Fletchers seem to have arrived in the parish at much the same time as the Elcombes. They first come to notice through the christening of Mary, daughter of Joseph and Mary Fletcher, on New Year’s Day, 1758. A Michael Fletcher, of whom more later, was probably the infant’s elder brother, born before the move to Ash. Several more children followed Mary. The last born, James Fletcher, was to become the family Croesus.
   Basically, the Fletchers were a farming family, but probably agriculture made only a modest contribution to their advancement. Although Joseph Fletcher became the owner of Rands House Farm, the nucleus of what in more recent times was the extensive Holywell Park estate, only some fifty-seven acres went with the house in his day. Michael Fletcher owned Padley Farm, of which the Malthouse was the homestall; its acreage, or at least its acreage in Ash, was modest and initially Michael only ranked as an husbandman.
   In 1792 Joseph, then an old man, was living on his farm at Stone House and Michael was working the land. Not all the Fletchers were long lived, but Joseph was

eighty-one when he died in 1800, his wife died twelve years later at eighty-four and James, their youngest son, achieved eighty-eight.
   Michael Fletcher married, at Shoreham, a girl named Sarah Petman; ‘she presented him with seven sons and three daughters, but three of the sons died in infancy. The Fletchers were by no means universally successful. One of Michael’s sons, Joseph, described himself as a farmer in 1841, when he was living in Ash Street, but he seems not to have prospered as such. Ten years later, he was an 'annuitant', having perhaps been pensioned off by his uncle James. At the age of seventy-six, by which time ‘he had moved on ‘to West Yoke, he was in business of sorts as a land measurer. One of his daughters, Susannah, was for many years a schoolmistress and another, Emily, was for a time a dressmaker. In 1871, at which time some of the family were living in considerable state in the vicinity of Hodsoll Street, Joseph’ son of the same name, a widower, and his son, aged thirteen, were occupying one of the numerous abodes provided by the Old Malthouse; both were agricultural labourers.
   Joseph’s elder brother, Thomas, became a wheelwright. During his lifetime, two of his children, Kezia Laurenda and Frederick Augustus, were adopted by their great-uncle James, but both died in