at Fawkham Rectory that he had spent the earlier years of his married life and where his three eldest children had been born. Now he was there with the two youngest of those three and two other children, who had been born at Ash. Lydia Jones, the governess who long looked after the survivors of the now motherless family, and two servants completed the household. It was a more modest establishment than that maintained by his curate, the Revd George Parnell, at Ash.
   There were no longer children at Ash Rectory, but the resident staff consisted of a cook, a footman, a gardener and a lady’s maid. That somewhat imposing array is not surprising in view of the family’s social standing. Parnell was one of the Sons of the first Baron Congleton, his eldest sister was married to Dr Charles Longley, Headmaster of Harrow and later to become Archbishop of Canterbury, and his beautiful and deeply religious youngest sister was Emma, Countess of Darnley, widow of that Earl of Darnley whose untimely death from tetanus had followed an accident with an axe in Cobham Woods. The only hint of the curate’s aristocratic connections in the census return is provided by the description of ‘the Honourable’ accorded to his wife, Katherine. Maybe George Parnell’s modesty in not so designating himself, as properly he might have done, gave some justification for bestowing a courtesy title on his

wife, to which she was not in fact entitled. It could be, however, that he was the only member of the aristocracy who, up to that time, had ever lived in Ash. He did not remain at the Rectory for very long.
   Those enjoying the fruits of retirement included a retired taylor, a retired schoolmaster and a Chelsea pensioner. There were few such fruits for the eleven men, mostly aged agricultural labourers, and the fifteen women, mostly widows of agricultural labourers, who were paupers.
   Appreciably more than half of the inhabitants had been born in Ash and although many small children swelled that particular tally, more than three-quarters were natives either of Ash itself or of an adjoining parish. There were fewer than forty people who had been born more than ten miles from an Ash boundary and fewer than thirty of those came from outside Kent. ‘Guernsey British subject’ was the most exotic birthplace entered. The other aliens all came from English counties, mostly in the south-east of the country. A possible exception was the odd woman out; she did not know whence she came.
   Neither correct nor consistent orthography was an outstanding characteristic of the census schedules, especially in so far as placenames were concerned