The recorded burials at Ash from 1553 to 1812 total 1,562; the actual number was more and is likely to have been appreciably more. The average burial rate produced by the sparse sixteenth century entries is little more than two each year; the rate for the first half of the seventeenth century rises, despite apparent deficiencies in the register, to nearly five. From 1650 to 1699 the annual average is a little under six and from 1700 to 1749 is between seven and eight. From 1750 to 1812 the rate is about nine.
  Entries of sixteenth and seventeenth century burials are seldom expansive, but they do provide evidence of 

one village industry in Ash not otherwise recorded. In 1556 there died ‘Thomas Downe a nurce child’, in 1578 ‘Partridges nurce child’, in 1610 ‘Thomas Roafe his sonne a nurschild at Letchfords’ and in 1634 ‘A Nurse childe which John Standon kepte’. The entry following that for Thomas Roafe’s son may be of the same kind, but could mean almost anything; it reads: ‘Edward Bell another of Dewes’.
   During the eighteenth century, when the entries are generally more informative, the scourge of infant mortality is very apparent, with an