Ridley, at a yearly rent of thirty-two pounds. The land Tax, levied at four shillings in the pound, amounted to six pounds and eight shillings. That was one of the larger assessments, although a good way behind those for South Ash, Ash Place and Idleigh farms and further still from the eighteen pounds that Ash’s largest contributor, the Revd Charles Whitehead, paid for the Rectory. The 1792 survey, which was solely concerned with land in Ash, showed ‘Mr Kebble’ as the owner of Lower Pettings and the one hundred and eighteen Ash acres that belonged to it.
   Another owner in the Hodsoll Street area was a Mr Budgen, a comparative newcomer to the Ash scene, whose one hundred and twelve acres included Gooses Farm of fifty-eight acres, the humble eighteen acres of Middle Pettings and a small farm of thirty-six acres that lay athwart Honepot Lane; the last-mentioned may have been known as Home Farm, but was anonymous so far as Mr Fulljames was concerned.
   The one hundred and fourteen Ash acres that centred

on what is now known as West Yoke Farmhouse were credited to a Mr Cox, a descendant, no doubt, of the John Cox who had bought the farm or taken a mortgage on, in 1727. He may have been the Joseph Cox who for some part of the seventeen-eighties had worked this land, first as the tenant of Mrs Cox and Mrs Penury and then of Mrs Cox. The Cox and Penury families were related and Ash had known them both.¹²
   By the time of the survey, Joseph Cox had departed and so, taking as criterion ownership of upwards of one hundred acres, the only owner-occupier of substance in the parish was James Lance. Lance owned and farmed the one hundred and seventy-three acres comprised in North Ash Farm, old family property, and his comparatively recent acquisition, Old House Farm. He was also owner, but not occupier, of some nineteen other acres and occupier, but not owner, of the small Cuckolds Corner Farm, that. being the property of Multon Lambard