Another long and close association of George Day’s was with the Baptist community of Ash, which had already been in existence for many years before he came to the parish and which had gained support from some neighbouring parishes that, at the time, had no nonconformist places of worship.
   It was in the middle of another war, in 1943, that Mr Day’s funeral service took place at the little Baptist chapel near Butler’s Point. That, however, was ten years after he had retired from farming and had sold North Ash and New House farms, together comprising four hundred and twenty-nine acres, to a Mr J.W. Ansell. He had excluded North Ash Manor, with its two acres of gardens, from the sale and there he had continued for the remainder of his long life.²⁴
   Not, perhaps, too fanciful is the suggestion that New Ash Green would never have been born, had not George Day decided, when he sold his farms, to retain his North Ash farmhouse. The New House

farmhouse was included in the sale, but, though venerable, it was a modest building and hardly adequate for a farm of more than four hundred acres. In any case and. whether or not for that reason, Mr Ansell, who lived in Essex and had presumably bought as an investment, split the land between two tenants. The tenant at North Ash was, actually, a son-in-law of Mr Day.
   Ownership of the two farms remained in the Ansell family for nearly thirty years. In the meantime, the house that the Lances had built was bought, after the Second World War, by a Dr Gresswell and, later, by Commander A.G. Howard, who was the last owner to occupy it as a private house.
   In 1961, the farms were offered for sale by auction by Ansell trustees and acquired by developers, who had in mind the creation of what was to become New Ash Green. It was generally felt in the neighbourhood that the purchasers