|
house in Stansted parish and of land in Ash near
Hodsoll Street.3
The decennial census taken three years later, in March of
1851, produced perhaps the most interesting returns of their kind so far
laid open to public gaze and set the general pattern for many years to
come. Its mid-Victorian successors tended to become more particular as
to the incidence of physical or mental disturbances, but, in the case of
Ash, the parish was either too healthy or too discreet for that to make
much difference. Only in much more recent times has bureaucratic
curiosity substantially widened the front.
For the 1851 census, the parish was divided in much the
same way as ten years before, although the sectors were now differently
described. The western sector, for which George Elcome again took the
road was defined as:
'All that part of the parish of Ash lying West of the road
from Longfield to Stansted comprising Pease Hill Ash Street the
Hamlet of West Yoak, |
|
Turners Oak North Ash, Cuckoo Corner that part of
Idleigh Farm in Ash parish, South Ash, Terrys Lodge & Gate South of
the Maidstone road, Cottage, near Kingsdown, Nightingale & Billett
Farms with the Cottages thereon’.
The pedant might carp at the punctuation and object that
Idleigh Farm was not west of the Longfield to Stansted road, but George
Elcome would have been left in no doubt where he was required to go.
Something should be said of ‘Terrys Lodge & Gate’.
The ‘Gate’ was a toll-gate, in association with which was what the
1839 tithe agreement called ‘Turnpike House and Garden’ and the 1841
census return ‘The Gate house at Terys Lodge’. Neither gate nor
gatehouse seem to have existed in 1792. Their subsequent appearance may
possibly be attributable to the fact that the road past Terry’s Lodge
provided an access road whereby traffic from Tonbridge and other places
south of the main turnpike |