John Freer, a Quaker and was still at the farm in 1717 the year before his daughter Elizabeth married Benjamin Cole and the tenancy had passed to his son by 1772 and in 1787 he and John Weetman of nearby Scawton Croft were paying annual rent of 12s for a schoolhouse in Rievaulx village. Robert’s son Thomas was the tenant in 1846 and in 1851 he was living at the farm with his sister Ann and their three nieces Jane, Elizabeth and Dorothy Agar Freer and his brother Robert was living at Old Byland Hall where he worked as a horse dealer. Elizabeth married George Buckden in 1851 and thirty years later her sister Jane was the tenant of Ashberry Farm in 1881 being helped by Elizabeth’s son Robert and they were the last members of the Freer family to live at Ashberry as John Robinson the Rievaulx miller had the tenancy at the end of that year though he continued to live at Mill House in Rievaulx village and in the same year an acre known as Rye Bridge Garth adjoining the river and two small strips alongside Nettlebeck known as Fiddler Green and Potato Garth were purchased by Sir George Ordby Wombwell from Earl Feversham. After John Robinson’s death in 1894 the tenancy was taken by his widow Betsy, their son Edmund was running the farm and may have done so before his father’s death but the family left Ashberry in 1905 and the tenancy was taken by William Ellis the son of Thomas who had the tenancies of Caydale Mill and Mount Pleasant farm. William’s younger brother Herbert also lived at Ashberry where his sons Francis Edmund and Thomas Alan Douglas were born in 1915 and 1919 respectively.
The sale catalogue of 1922 listed John Barker as the tenant but Robert Bentley and his wife Edith Mary were at the farm in 1924 when their daughter Freda was born followed by the births of Eric in 1926 and Herbert in 1928 and it is a coincidence that two men born at the farm have lived in adjoining villages longer than any other inhabitants. Francis Edmund Ellis owns Mount Pleasant Farm in Old Byland and Herbert Ellis is the owner of Old Rectory Farm in Scawton. Both their ancestries can be traced back to the 17th century as Francis Edmund’s grandmother was Sarah Cole whose ancestor John lived in Old Byland in 1677 and Herbert Bentley’s mother was Edith Mary York whose ancestor William was living in Scawton at the same time.
A rating document of 1934 recorded Leslie Frank at Ashberry which appears to have been owned by his father John and in 1937 Walter Fenwick moved to the farm from Abbot Hagg Farm in Rievaulx and as his grandson Walter still farms at Ashberry in 2004 the family have been there for 67 years.
