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Ashdown Forest in the county of East Sussex, England, is an open area of Vorlage:Convert of heathland together with pine, birch and oak woodland in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is famous as the setting for the "Winnie the Pooh" stories written by A. A. Milne. There has been debate as to whether it should become a national park. Its chief village is Nutley, while many shops and amenities are to be found in the village of Forest Row on the northern edge of the forest and in the town of Crowborough to the east.

History

Various trees in Ashdown Forest

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Ashdown Forest's origins lie as a Norman royal deer-hunting forest, dating back to the period immediately following the Norman conquest of 1066.

Prior to the Norman conquest, Ashdown Forest formed an unnamed part of a much larger forest that stretched across south-east England, known to the Britons as Coit Andred, to the Romans as Sylva Anderida and to the Saxons as Andredes Weald (from which the name of the physiographic region in which Ashdown Forest is situated, the Weald, is derived). According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of AD 893, this great forest measured 120 miles (195 kilometres) from east to west, extending from the Kent marshes into Hampshire, and 30 miles (50 kilometres) from north to south, bounded by the North and South Downs. The Venerable Bede in AD 731 described it as thick and inaccessible, a place of retreat for large herds of deer and swine, and frequented by wolves and wild boar.

Ashdown Forest is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 but, lying as it did within the Rape of Pevensey, it had already been granted by William the Conqueror to his half brother Robert and it formed part of the Forest of Pevensel. There were two important conditions: the King could keep and hunt deer on the forest, while the local inhabitants - the customary tenants (commoners) - could continue to use it to graze their livestock and cut wood for fuel and bracken for livestock bedding.

By the end of the 13th century the whole forest was surrounded by a 38 kilometre (23 mile) long pale - a ditch and bank surmounted by a wooden fence that allowed deer to enter but not leave. This pale, first recorded in 1283, enclosed an area of over 5,300 hectares (20.5 square miles) within which Red and Fallow deer were hunted . Entry was via 34 gates and hatches through the pale. The gates were used for access by wheeled vehicles, commoners' animals and mounted groups, while the hatches were used by pedestrians. These names survive in local place-names such as Coleman's Hatch and Chelwood Gate. Although the pale had fallen into disrepair by the end of the 17th century, remnants are still visible today.

The forest was owned by the Lords of Pevensey Castle for most of the period until 1268, when it was vested in the Crown in perpetuity. The forest was used for deer hunting by King Edward II of England, who built a hunting lodge near Nutley that was later to be used by John of Gaunt.

In 1372 Edward III granted the "Free-chase of Ashdon" to his third son, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It is supposed that he built a chapel near Nutley (Chapel Wood marks the site) where, on one occasion at least, John Wycliffe officiated. . From this time the forest was known as Lancaster Great Park (park denoting an enclosed hunting ground, in contrast to a forest). Edward III and John of Gaunt frequently hunted here and, despite reverting to the Crown on the Duke's death in 1399, the forest continued to be known by this name until 1672.

In 1561 Sir Richard Sackville was granted the "mastership of the Forest and keepership of the wild beasts therein". Later, the Sackvilles became Earls and Dukes of Dorset, and they retained the Lordship of the Manor of Duddleswell (which included the forest) until the male line died out in 1815. They were followed by the related de la Warr family, who owned the forest until 1988.

In the late 17th century the Ashdown Forest took its present-day shape when more than half of it was effectively 'privatised'. Throughout the century, under both monarchy and commonwealth, there had been repeated proposals and attempts to enclose and improve the forest, whose condition had deteriorated so much that by the time of the Restoration in 1660 'the whole forest [had been] laid open and made waste'. These proposals had been resolutely opposed by the commoners and by the owners of neighbouring estates who claimed right of pasture on the forest. Finally, the Lord of the Manor, the Earl of Dorset, and others commenced legal action against 133 defendants who claimed common rights. In 1691 it was decreed that commissioners were to be appointed to divide the forest. They gave their award on 4 December 1693: 5,500 acres of the Forest were reserved as common land for the Commoners; the rest was assigned to its owners and proprietors for 'enclosure and improvement'. As a result, the Ashdown Forest today is highly irregular in shape with large tracts of enclosed, privately-owned land at its centre and many smaller enclosures around the edges. Some of the largest enclosures were used for intensive rabbit farming, such as Hindleap Warren and Broadstone Warren. Another large enclosure, Pippingford Park, is today used as a military training area. That the forest today still appears to be an extensive area of wild country is partly because the land that was taken into private hands has largely remained uncultivated; indeed, it contains almost all the ancient woodland that remains within the old forest pale.

In 1876-82 a further dispute over commoners' rights led directly to today's framework of forest governance. On 13 October 1877 John Miles was seen cutting litter on behalf of his landlord Bernard Hale, a Commoner, by one of Earl De La Warr's keepers. He was told to stop, but refused. This led to the Ashdown Forest case, brought by Reginald Sackville, 7th Earl De La Warr, as Lord of the Manor against Hale and Miles, to test the extent of Hale's right to use the forest's common land. The Commoners lost, but an appeal in 1881 found in their favour. Following this dispute a Board of Conservators was established by Act of Parliament in 1885 to oversee the Forest bye-laws, including the protection of Commoner's rights. Further Acts of Parliament have since further refined the governance of Ashdown Forest, the final and most important being the Ashdown Forest Act 1974.

In 1988 a possible threat to the continued existence of Ashdown Forest as open common land was averted when, with the benefit of donations from many sources, including a public appeal, East Sussex County Council bought the freehold of Ashdown Forest (Lordship of the Manor) from the executors of the 10th Earl de la Warr and established the Ashdown Forest Trust as the Forest's owner.

Conservation

The Ashdown Forest is an area of tranquil open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridges of the High Weald, reaching its highest altitude of 233 metres (732 feet) above sea level at Greenwood Gate Clump near King's Standing. It provides expansive views across the Weald in all directions but particularly southwards where the chalk escarpment of the South Downs can be seen on the horizon.

The whole of the forest is in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a landscape characterised by a nationally high woodland cover and many ancient woodlands, ghylls, shaws, small fields and heathland, of which Ashdown is the most important example: its 1,500 hectares of lowland heathland is the largest area of this threatened habitat in south-east England. Reflecting its ecological importance, most of the land managed by the Conservators falls within the Ashdown Forest Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), the Ashdown Forest Special Protection Area (SPA) and the Ashdown Forest Special Area of Conservation (SAC), the last two being designations under EU directives relating to the protection of birds and habitats respectively. The forest's importance on the European level is underlined by its membership of the Natura 2000 network, which brings together Europe's most precious and threatened wildlife sites.

The forest, with its predominance of heathland, is essentially a man-made landscape which has largely been shaped over many centuries by the commoners in the exercise of their customary rights, particularly the grazing of their animals on the forest. This activity was once substantial: for example, at the end of the 13th century commoners were turning out 2,000-3,000 cattle onto the forest alongside the 1,000-2,000 deer that were also present, while according to a 1297 record it was also grazed by almost 2,700 swine. The amount of woodland cover has varied over the centuries. By 1900 heavy grazing of the forest had made it virtually treeless and its heathland was the largest in south-East England. A sharp decline in grazing by Commoners after World War II led to a substantial loss of heathland, since without human intervention heath is quickly overrun by scrub and trees. The dangers posed to livestock by increasing amounts of road traffic across the forest also became a major concern, and in 1985 the last of the free-ranging livestock of the Commoners was removed because of losses on the roads. The decline in grazing and other commonable activities by the Commoners has led to an increase in the proportion of woodland from about 10% in 1947 to 40% in 2007. It is now the intention of the forest Conservators to maintain the ratio of heathland to woodland at 60:40; this will require their active intervention to clear trees and scrub and cut bracken.

Dealing with the threat to Ashdown's distinctive open heathland landscape, its wildlife and stunning views is one of the main challenges facing the forest's Conservators today. The terms of the statutory conservation designations (SSSI, SPA and SAC - see above) and of public funding under a 10-year Natural England Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement signed in August 2006 (the largest such scheme in south-east England) require the Conservators to restore the heathland into "favourable condition". To suppress scrub and trees the Conservators undertake regular mowing of the heathland in the summer and cutting of birch saplings in the winter. In 1996 the Secretary of State for the Environment gave permission for a 550 hectare fenced enclosure in the southern part of the forest to allow Commoners to graze their livestock in safety, and to enhance the conservation value of the heathlands. More recently, a close-herded shepherding project, funded by the HLS scheme, has been piloted in which a flock of over 100 Hebridean sheep is guided by a shepherd to graze the heathland. An advantage of this approach is that sheep prefer to eat coarse grass and scrub and ignore heather, their grazing can be targeted on the most over-grown areas, they will graze in places that are difficult to deal with through mowing, and no fencing is required; a disadvantage may be that it is labour-intensive and small-scale in nature.

Flora and Fauna

Friends Clump

The forest is noted for its heathland flora, of which the most famous is the Marsh Gentian. This rare plant with bright blue trumpet flowers is still quite abundant in about a dozen colonies. Its flowering season lasts from July well into October. The heathland is characterised by an abundance of plants in the heather family, especially Ling but also Bell Heather and Cross-leaved Heath, but it is also a stronghold of many heathland specialities, including Petty Whin, Creeping Willow, Heath Spotted Orchid and in the damper areas, Bog Asphodel. On the woodland floor are found Bluebell, Wood Anemone and Wood Sorrel.

The commonest trees are Pendunculate Oak and Silver Birch, with in the wetter areas Alder, Downy Birch and the shrub Alder Buckthorn. There is some Sessile Oak. The clumps of Scots Pine that form such a distinctive hilltop feature were mostly planted in 1825 by Arabella Diana, Dowager Duchess, Lady of the Manor. She planted 8 clumps and granted the public permission to cross her land to visit them. A clump at Millbrook also dates from this time. Later plantings comprise Macmillan Clump (commemorating former British prime-minister Harold Macmillan, who lived nearby), Kennedy Clump (commemorating a visit by United States President John F Kennedy) and Friends Clump, planted in 1973 to mark the Year of the Tree.

Important populations of heath and woodland birds are found on the forest. The early 1990s saw the resurgence of Britain's scarcest heathland bird species, the Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata. It breeds where gorse is well established among the heather, often alongside Stonechat, Skylarks and Meadow Pipits. The forest's large populations of Dartford Warbler and European Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus were the principal reasons for its designation in 1996 as an EU Special Protection Area.

The forest supports a rich invertebrate fauna, with many heathland specialities. Half of Britain's 46 breeding species of damselflies and dragonflies (the Odonata) have been recorded, the scarcer among them being the Black Darter, Brilliant Emerald and Small Red Damselfly. Of the Forest's 34 species of butterfly, the most spectacular, the Purple Emperor, can be hard to see. Another speciality, the Silver-studded Blue, is plentiful; the main food plants of its caterpillars are gorses and heathers.

Deer have been a feature of Ashdown Forest particularly since its enclosure as a royal hunting park in the 13th century. Red deer, which were an essential part of Wealden culture as far back as 6-8,000 years ago, and Fallow deer, introduced by the Normans, were both hunted until the 17th century. Red deer however disappeared by 1700, while Fallow deer declined to very low numbers by the end of the 17th century after the forest pale had gradually, over many years, fallen into disrepair and disuse, allowing them to escape. Fallow deer returned in the 20th century, probably as a result of escapes from a local deer park. The population of Fallow deer has grown sharply in the last three decades, and they now number in their thousands in the forest and the surrounding area. Large numbers (over 300 a year) are involved in collisions with motor vehicles on local roads and many are killed. Reducing deer casualties and how best to control their numbers have become major issues. Also found on the forest are Roe (the only native deer on the forest), Muntjac and Sika deer.

The forest was at one time home to a number of Red-necked Wallabies, the result of an escape from a captive colony in what was probably a farm. By the 1940s these were believed to be fully naturalised and breeding; numbers declined, however, and the last confirmed sighting was in 1972.

Archaeology

Ashdown Forest has a rich archaeological heritage. 573 sites have been identified, including Bronze Age round barrows, Iron Age enclosures, prehistoric field systems, iron workings from Roman times onwards, the Pale (the original forest boundary), medieval and post-medieval pillow mounds for the rearing of rabbits, and a set of military kitchen mounds between Camp Hill and Nutley dating from 1793 that are among the only surviving ones in the United Kingdom.

Roman road

A Roman road, the London to Lewes Way crossed the forest in a north-south direction, following a straight line from Edenbridge High Street through Chuck Hatch to the top of the forest, on an Vorlage:Convert wide agger. The earthworks were damaged by tank training exercises during World War II. Part of the agger is marked out at Roman Road car park.

Iron working

Iron working was once a great forest industry, forming an important part of the Wealden iron industry, and operating from Roman (possibly pre-Roman) times through to the early 18th century. The industry developed here because of the presence of iron-bearing sandstone, woodland for the production of charcoal, and water: the forest's valleys, together with its locally high rainfall, were particularly suitable for the damming of streams to provide water power for iron-smelting bloomeries and, from the late 15th century, blast furnaces. There is evidence of Roman bloomeries at Pippingford Park and elsewhere, while the Roman road between London and Lewes, which carried the products of the Wealden iron industry, is paved with bloomery slag (waste). In 1496 Britain's first blast furnace was built at Newbridge, near Coleman's Hatch. The southern part of the forest supplied the iron-master and gun founder Ralph Hogge, who in 1543 cast the first iron cannon in England at nearby Buxted. The rapid expansion of the iron industry at this time and its huge demand for raw materials is likely to have had a major impact on Ashdown Forest; for example, in 1520 it was contended that "much of the King's woods were cut down and coled [turned into charcoal] for the iron mills, and the Forest digged for Irne [iron] by which man and beast be in jeopardy"

Garden Hill

Garden Hill is one of the most important archaeological sites in Ashdown Forest. It contains both an Iron Age hill-fort and the remains of a Romano-British iron-working centre. Excavations at the hill fort showed the inhabitants to have been influenced by the Roman invaders who had arrived in England in the first century BC: for example, traditional British round houses were replaced in the 2nd Century A.D. by a rectangular villa building with an adjoining stone-built bath house. The iron-working centre appears to have administered a network of iron-smelting furnaces around the forest operating from the late 1st century AD to the early 3rd century AD. Garden Hill, which is situated on a hill spur south of Colemans Hatch Road, lies within the Ministry of Defence's Pippingford Park military training area and is not open to the public.

Visitor attractions

Ashdown Forest Centre

The Ashdown Forest Centre, situated opposite Ashdown Park hotel on the road between Wych Cross and Coleman's Hatch, is the administrative base for the forest Conservators. Completed in 1983, it consists of three old reconstructed barns. One of these houses a visitor centre which contains a permanent display about the forest's history and wildlife, provides details of walks in the forest and other useful information for visitors, and has an exhibition area showing local craft and art work. The centre is open 7 days a week during the summer, weekends in the winter, and on Bank Holidays except Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

Old Lodge Nature Reserve

Old Lodge nature reserve, managed by Sussex Wildlife Trust, offers open vistas of the forest's heathland. A well-marked nature trail leads round most of the hilly 76 hectare reserve, which contains acidic ponds and areas of pine woodland. The reserve is notable for dragonfly, nightjar, redstart, woodcock, tree pipit, stonechat and adder.

Nutley Windmill

Nutley Windmill

One of the best preserved windmills in Sussex, Nutley Windmill stands just north of the Nutley to Duddleswell road. It is thought to be about 300 years old, having been moved from another site, possibly Kilndown in Kent. This rare example of an open-trestle post mill (the whole body of the mill can be rotated on its massive central post to face the wind) has been restored to full working order and is open to the public. It is within easy walking distance of Friend's Clump car-park.

The Airman's Grave

The Airman's Grave is not actually a grave, but a memorial on the heathland west of Duddleswell which marks the spot where, on the morning of 31 July 1941, a Wellington bomber of 142 Squadron crashed on its return from a raid on Cologne during World War II; all six crew died. A service takes place each year on Remembrance Sunday when wreaths are laid. The Ashdown Forest Centre has published a circular walk to the memorial from Hollies car park.

Ashdown Forest Llama Park

Situated near Wych Cross, Ashdown Forest Llama Park breeds and sells llamas and alpacas, and operates as a visitor attraction to educate the public about these animals. The park has a gift shop, coffee shop and tourist information point for which there is no admission charge.

Gills Lap

Gills Lap (at ) is a roundel of fir trees located on the site of an Iron Age fort on one of the forest's highest hilltops. It appears in the Winnie-the-Pooh books as "Galleon's Lap" or the "Enchanted place". A stone hand axe, thought to be about 50,000 years old, was found near here and is the earliest known trace of human occupation of the Ashdown Forest area.

Winnie-the-Pooh

The Plaque commemorating A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard at Gills Lap

Ashdown Forest is famous as the setting for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, written by A. A. Milne for his son Christopher Robin Milne. The first book, Winnie-the-Pooh, was published in 1926 with illustrations by EH Shepard. The second book, The House at Pooh Corner, also illustrated by Shepard, was published in 1928. These hugely popular stories were set in Ashdown Forest: A.A. Milne's country retreat at Cotchford Farm was situated just north of the forest about a mile from the entrance at Chuck Hatch; from there he and his wife, son and nanny would regularly venture out onto the forest. In his autobiography Christopher Milne wrote that “Pooh’s forest and Ashdown Forest are identical”. Several of the sites described in the books can be easily identified, although their names have been changed. For example Five Hundred Acre Wood became the Hundred Acre Wood and Gill’s Lap became Galleon's Lap. The North Pole and Gloomy Place are in Wren’s Warren valley as is The Dark and Mysterious Forest.

The landscapes depicted in Shepard’s illustrations for the books are very evocative of Ashdown Forest; indeed in some cases they can be matched up to actual views, allowing for a degree of artistic licence. Shepard's sketches of pine trees and other forest scenes are on display at the V&A Museum in London.

A walking guide, “Pooh Walks from Gills Lap”, is available from the Ashdown Forest Centre and may be downloaded from its website. The longer of the two walks described takes in many locations familiar from the Pooh stories: Galleon's Lap, The Enchanted Place, the Heffalump Trap and Lone Pine, the memorial to Milne and Shepard, North Pole, 100 Aker Wood and Eeyore’s Sad and Gloomy Place.

Pooh Sticks Bridge is a mile north of Gills Lap at Chuck Hatch. A path leads to the bridge from a car-park on Chuck Hatch Lane, just off the B2026 Maresfield to Hartfield road.

Film and television

Various locations in and around Ashdown Forest have been used as settings for television and film productions. These include Colditz, the 2002 version of The Four Feathers, Under Suspicion, Flyboys and HBO/BBC's mini-series Band of Brothers.

In 2001 rare archival cine film footage depicting a school pageant held in Ashdown Forest in 1929 came to public attention when details from Christopher Robin Milne's autobiography prompted a closer examination of the film, and it was discovered that a child clearly identifiable as him could be seen in it. Frank Gray, director of the South East Film and Video Archive (now known as Screen Archive South East), which held the film, was reported as saying: Vorlage:Cquote

The footage was shown in a documentary by the "Southern Eye" programme broadcast by the BBC Two television channel on 27 November 2001. During the documentary, 10-year old presenter Joel Pitts navigated his way around Ashdown forest using a map of the "Hundred Acre Wood" drawn by E. H. Shepard (illustrator of the "Winnie the Pooh" books) and found that Roo's Sandy Pit, Galleon's Lap and various other landmarks could be located with it.

Notable people

Author A.A. Milne's country home at Cotchford Farm, Hartfield, lay close to the northern edge of the forest; many places in his Winnie the Pooh stories were based on locations in the forest. Brian Jones of the The Rolling Stones later lived at Cotchford Farm and died there in 1969. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lived at Crowborough, on the eastern edge of the forest, while the nature writer Richard Jefferies also lived in Crowborough for a period while he wrote some of his famous essays. Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe, the best friend and equerry of Edward VIII., lived in a grey stone house in the forest. Birch Grove, the home of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, is located on the edge of the forest near Chelwood Gate; the Macmillan Clump of trees is named in his honour.

William Cobbett passing through in January 1822 noted in his book Rural Rides: "At about three miles from Grinstead you come to a pretty village, called Forest-Row, and then, on the road to Uckfield, you cross Ashurst (sic) Forest, which is a heath, with here and there a few birch scrubs upon it, verily the most villainously ugly spot I saw in England. This lasts you for five miles, getting, if possible, uglier and uglier all the way, till, at last, as if barren soil, nasty spewy gravel, heath and even that stunted, were not enough, you see some rising spots, which instead of trees, present you with black, ragged, hideous rocks. There may be English-men who wish to see the coast of Nova Scotia. They need not go to sea; for here it is to the life. If I had been in a long trance (as our nobility seem to have been), and had been waked up here, I should have begun to look about for the Indians and the squaws, and to have heaved a sigh at the thought of being so far from England."

Forest management

Ashdown Forest is managed by an independent Board of Conservators. The Board has sixteen members: nine are appointed by East Sussex County Council (one of whom represents the Lord of the Manor, Ashdown Forest Trust), two by Wealden District Council, and the remaining five are elected by the Commoners, of whom four must be Commoners. Day to day running is carried out by the Forest Superintendent and a team of rangers.

The Conservators are required to act in accordance with Parliamentary Acts. The last of these, the Ashdown Forest Act 1974, states (Section 16):

"It shall be the duty of the the Conservators at all times and as far possible to regulate and manage the Forest as an amenity and place of resort subject to the existing rights of common upon the forest and to protect such rights of common, to protect the forest from encroachments, and to conserve it as a quiet and natural area of outstanding beauty."

A number of byelaws have been made by the Conservators under the 1974 Act to protect the forest. These include prohibitions on off-roading driving, mountain-biking, horse-riding (except by permit), camping, the lighting of fires, digging and the dumping of rubbish.

Large numbers of volunteers support the work of the Conservators by undertaking conservation work in the forest. Many of these are recruited by the Friends of the Ashdown Forest. Fundraising by the Friends has helped towards the purchase of capital equipment for forest management and enabled the Conservators to buy back parcels of land for reincorporation into the forest.

Commoners

That Ashdown Forest remains the open, uncultivated heathland we see today is due largely to the actions of its Commoners, local inhabitants who, over the last thousand years, have exercised rights of common on the Forest and who have defended those rights against attempts by landlords - particularly in the late 17th and late 19th centuries - to limit or extinguish them.

These forest rights probably have varied over the centuries. Today those that remain are pasturage - the grazing on the forest of livestock such as cattle; estovers - the collection of birch, willow and alder as firewood for the "ancestral hearth"; and litter - the cutting of bracken or heather for thatching and bedding of livestock. Other historical rights: of pannage - feeding pigs on mast (acorns or other nuts), and turbary - the cutting of turf for fuel, have been lost; the latter was outlawed in the 19th century because of the damage it was causing to the forest floor.

The Commoners' rights allowed them to practise a simple pastoral system. During the summer they would turn out their livestock onto the forest to graze; this would allow them to use the fields close to their smallholdings (the 'in-bye' land) to produce hay for winter fodder or to grow cereals. In the winter, they would bring their animals indoors and bed them down on bracken litter. In the spring they would cover the in-bye land with the manure-laden litter to improve its fertility. The Commoners' exploitation of the forest in this way was crucial to maintaining its distinctive landscape of predominantly open uncultivated heathland.

The 20th century saw a sharp decline in the exploitation of the forest by the Commoners, particularly after World War II. As their smallholdings increasingly became unable to compete with cheaper agricultural produce from elsewhere, many Commoners decided to give up their onerous work and moved to jobs in nearby towns and cities or else retired, in some cases selling up to commuters looking for an attractive country retreat.

In 1965, a UK Act of Parliament, the Commons Registration Act, resulted in a large drop in the number of Commoners. Commoners across the country were required to register to preserve their rights. In Ashdown, where there were about 1,300 Commoners, more than half failed to do so, and so the rights of common that were attached to their properties were lost for ever. Today, very few of the remaining 730 Commoners take advantage of their commonable rights to exploit the forest. This poses major problems for the Conservators in relation to forest management: heath has tended to become old and woody, bracken to spread and scrubby birch to invade; and the special habitats for which Ashdown Forest has become famous have become threatened.

Commoners are entitled to vote for five representatives on the Forest's Board of Conservators; they are also obliged to pay a "Forest Rate" to contribute towards the upkeep of the forest.

Recent disputes

In 2007 the Forest was the centre of a dispute between some local residents and the Board of Conservators. The Board wished to return the area to its state before the Second World War, a blend of heath and woodland, lost because "the advance of woodland into traditional heath areas after the Second World War, when returning soldiers gave up trying to scratch a living out of the forest. Whereas hundreds of commoners once used the wood and heath - their livestock chewing down young tree shoots - today there is only one commercial grazier." The residents complained that the results looked like a First World War battle field. This was not a problem restricted to this common, but according to Jonathan Brown writing in the Independent on 21 April 2007 "similar debates are raging between locals and the authorities at other heathland areas in the New Forest and Surrey".

A gate into Ashdown Forest at sunset

Another dispute, this time with cyclists, is the lack of off-road cycle routes over the forest. Whilst horse riders can, subject to purchase of an annual permit, roam the 130km of trails over the forest the same rights have not been extended to the growing number of cross country cyclists. Notices have been posted to enforce the 'no cycling' by-law, which makes cycling on the forest a criminal offence, relating to the supposed erosion caused by the activity; in fact the very authority posting these notices at public expense has acknowledged that erosion is not the issue, but that it's easier to use that excuse than admit fear of inability to manage and control an activity.

A comprehensive review of issues and opinions around mountain biking on Ashdown Forest was published by the Conservators in February 2009. It notes that the greatest area of contention concerns the perceived impact of mountain bikers, and of large numbers of them, on the forest's special character as a wilderness for quiet and safe recreation. The paper concludes with a recommendation that a ban on mountain biking be continued. The Conservators have however continued to meet with representatives of the local mountain biking community, who have put forward proposals to allay the concerns identified in the paper.

References

Further reading

• Garth Christian: Ashdown Forest. The Society of Friends of Ashdown Forest, 1967. 
• Philip Glyn, Prendergast, Hew: Ashdown Forest, An Illustrated Guide. Essedon Press, 1995, ISBN 0-9525549-0-9. 
• Brian M Short: The Ashdown Forest Dispute: Environmental Politics and Custom. Sussex Record Society, 1997, ISBN 0-85445-072-6. 
• Peter Kirby: Forest Camera. Sweethaws Press, 1998, ISBN 0-95117-955-0(?!). 
• Barbara Willard: The Forest - Ashdown in East Sussex. Sweethaws Press, 1989, ISBN 0-9511795-4-3. 
• Thomas Hinde: Forests of Britain. Sphere Books Ltd, 1987, ISBN 0-349-11687-3. 
• Peter Brandon: The Kent & Sussex Weald. Phillimore & Co Ltd, 2003, ISBN 1-86077-241-2. 

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External links

Commons: Andi oisn/Artikelwerkstatt2 – Sammlung von Bildern, Videos und Audiodateien

• Ashdown Forest website
• Designation as a Special Protection Area
• Vorlage:Oscoor gbx
• BBC News article, 27 November 2001: Christopher Robin revealed (describes the discovery of images of Christopher Robin Milne captured on the film of a school pageant held in Ashdown Forest in 1929).
• Notes from 'The Ashdown Forest Dispute'
• Ashdown Forest at 'The Sussex Weald'