of the hamlet, Frederick Arthur, son of Henry the blacksmith, had not yet chosen a trade; he was only ten years old..
   In. Ash churchyard, in a little plot of ground used into the nineteen-hundreds, many Olivers rest side by side,. their names recorded by inscriptions now fast fading. All knew, most lived in, the ancient timbered house, for much of the present century the home of Sir Geoffrey and Lady King, that is still called ‘Oliver’s Farm'.¹²
   The Rabsons turn up in the Ash registers twenty years after the Olivers. The first entry is of the marriage of Richard Rabson and Elizabeth Bell, both of Ash, in 1659. They had two children, Edward, of whom no more is found, and John, who in 1704 married Ann Baldwin of Fawkham. Ann was one of the family that gave their name to the little Green near Fawkham church, the remnants of which Fawkham still endeavours, against the odds, to keep green.
   John and Ann settled in Fawkham, where John 

rented a modest smallholding¹³  and where they were joined for the rest of her days by his widowed mother. At some time after Ann’s death in 1723/4, John returned to Ash, where he died in 1739/40. He was buried beside his wife in Fawkham churchyard, where theirs are the oldest tombstones now remaining.
   One of John's and Ann’ s four children, another Richard, was the father of John Rabson, the ‘dealer in coals’ who died of a fever in London in 1792, and of. John’s elder brother,. the Richard Rabson who became the Ash schoolmaster and parish clerk and in 1797 dropped down dead in the Rectory yard. That Richard lived in a cottage at the north end of Ash Street; his ownership of the cottage, with which went a garden and orchard of about an acre, made him another of Ash’s smaller freeholders. He also rented upwards of five acres of land at West Yoke, so evidently found time to combine a little farming with his professional duties.