hundred and sixty-three. That number included eleven anonymous persons, presumably vagrants, of whom three were computed to have spent the census night in barns, sheds or the like and eight in tents or the open air, Ash’s more conventional accommodation consisted of one hundred and thirty-three houses, all but two of which were occupied. The average number of people living in each house was just under five. 
   The census of 1841 is much more informative than its predecessors, although less so than its successors. Names of individuals were recorded for the first time but, save for children, only group ages were required. As to birthplaces, authority wanted to know whether a person had been born in the same county and, if not, whether he had been born in Scotland, Ireland or foreign parts. No Ash resident had been born in Scotland or Ireland let alone in foreign parts, and there were only twenty-three named persons who had been born outside Kent, No one cared where the vagrants had been born.
   For the purposes of the census, the parish was 

divided into two sections, ‘the road leading from Longfield to Trosley’ being, broadly, the dividing line. In the western section, for which George Elcome was enumerator, the most populous parts were ‘The Village of Ash’, in other words Ash Street, and ‘the hamlet of West Yoke’. The other enumerator, Thomas Fletcher, had less to do in Ash, where his principal hunting ground was in and around Hodsoll Street, but he was also responsible for the whole, such as it was, of Ridley.
   Ash was essentially a parish of the young. There were two hundred and seventy-three children under the age of fifteen, but only twenty-two people aged seventy or more; the latter included six octogenarians. The youngest inhabitant was the three day old son, as yet unnamed, of John and Harriet Bennett of Cobhall at Hodsoll Street.
   Apart from the rector and the village schoolmaster, the professions were unrepresented. There were twenty-one