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not a bad time for farming generally.
It is not within the purpose of this book, nor the
competence of its writer, to say much about events in Ash during the
later years of Victoria’s reign and beyond. Occasional references to
such more recent times have already been made and there will be some
further mention of those times in our concluding paragraphs. For the
present, it is proposed to retrace steps and touch upon, where that has
not already been done, the history of some of the more important or
interesting of Ash’s buildings and farms during the earlier part of
the nineteenth century. If only because they too often receive scant
justice in works of this kind, a start is made with the pubs, albeit
first with a dead one.
The Crooked Billet went out of legitimate business about
1830 and of illegitimate business |
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some time, no doubt, before that. It was converted
into two cottages.12 Later, the cottages were
demolished and replaced by a new farmhouse. That was probably done by or
for Owen Parsons, a local farmer who had been around since at least
1817, at which time he was tenant of Mr and Mrs Tasker’s land to the
south of Billet Hill. Parsons may have been a man of some affluence; at
any rate, he had married well, his wife, Mary Ann Bensted, being a
daughter of William and Elizabeth Bensted of Hartley Court. The Bensteds
had come to Hartley during the last decade of the eighteenth century and
were long to remain major farmers of that parish.
The Billet’s new farmhouse may have been built with a
view to sale, since in June 1839, when Parsons |