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Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of tranquil open heathland and woodland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some Vorlage:Convert south of London in the county of East Sussex, England. Rising to an altitude of Vorlage:Convert above sea level, its heights provide expansive vistas across the heavily wooded hills of the Weald to the chalk escarpments of the North Downs and South Downs on the horizon.

Ashdown Forest's origins lie in Norman times as a royal forest set aside for deer-hunting. By 1283 the forest was fenced in by a Vorlage:Convert pale enclosing a hunting park of some Vorlage:Convert. 34 gates and hatches in the pale, still remembered in place names, allowed local people to enter to graze their livestock, collect firewood and cut heather and bracken for animal bedding. The Forest continued to be used by the monarchy and nobility for hunting into Tudor times, including notably Henry VIII, who had a hunting lodge at Bolebroke Castle, Hartfield.

Ashdown Forest contains much evidence of prehistoric human activity, with the earliest evidence of human occupation dating back to 50,000 years ago. There are important Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman remains.

The forest was twice the centre of a nationally important iron industry, in Roman and Tudor times. One of England's first blast furnaces was built here in the 15th century.

In 1693 more than half the forest was taken into private hands, with the remainder set aside as common land. The latter today covers Vorlage:Convert and is administered by a Board of Conservators; it is entirely open for public access (subject to various byelaws) and is the largest area of its kind in south-east England.

Ashdown Forest's ecological importance as a unique area of lowland heathland has been recognised by its designation by the UK government as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and by the European Union as a Special Protection Area for birds and a Special Area of Conservation for its heathland habitats, and by its membership of Natura 2000, which brings together Europe's most important and threatened wildlife areas.

Ashdown Forest is famous as the setting for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories written by A. A. Milne, who lived on the northern edge of the forest and took his son, Christopher Robin, walking here. The illustrator of the Pooh stories, EH Shepard, used the landscapes of Ashdown Forest as the backdrop for the drawings that he provided for Milne.

Settlements

Ashdown Forest's chief villages are situated on its periphery. These include Nutley, Forest Row, Hartfield, Maresfield and Danehill, while to the east lies the town of Crowborough.

Toponymy

Ashdown Forest did not exist as such before the Norman conquest of 1066 AD and is not mentioned in the Domesday Book. In early Norman English times the area of land that was to become known as Ashdown Forest was merely an unidentified part of the much larger Forest of Pevensel, a Norman creation which had been carved out of a much larger area of woodland, the Saxon Weald, within the Rape of Pevensey. The first recorded reference to Ashdown Forest by name dates to the early 12th century when Henry I confirmed that monks could continue to use a road across "Essendone Forest" that they had used since the time of William the Conqueror.

"Ashdown Forest" consists of words from two different languages. Ashdown is of Anglo-Saxon origin and possibly means Aesca’s hill. Forest is of Norman origin, derived from the term "forestis". The latter first appeared in the early Middle Ages in deeds of donation of the Merovingian and Frankish kings and is thought to refer to wilderness that had not been cultivated and which had no clear owner; such wilderness lay beyond land that was cultivated and settled and which did have a clear owner. The majority view of scholars about the origin of the concept of "forestis" is that it is derived from the Latin foris or foras, which means "outside", "outside it" and "outside the settlement". In Norman England "Forest" specifically denoted land that was subject to Forest Law. Such land was legally set aside by the Crown for hunting and protected the sovereign right of the Crown to all wild animals. In time, Forest Law came to govern large parts of the English countryside, including in some cases entire counties, and, unlike on the European continent, it also applied to areas that did have a clear owner. It follows that the emergence of Ashdown in Norman times as a "forest" does not mean necessarily that it was heavily wooded. In fact, royal forests in England in medieval times, of which there were many, typically consisted of a mixture of heath, woodland and other habitats in which a variety of game could flourish. Ashdown Forest, despite being surrounded by the heavily wooded Weald, may have been no exception, especially given its sandstone geology, relatively high elevation, deep incised valleys and impoverished soils.

Definition

Ashdown Forest is very roughly shaped like an inverted triangle, some seven miles (11 km) from east to west and the same distance from north to south, with an extent of about Vorlage:Convert.

The Forest can be defined in various ways. The most important is that given by the line of the medieval pale, which goes back to the Forest's origins as a Norman deer-hunting park. This Vorlage:Convert long ditch and bank topped with an oak palisade enclosed an area of some Vorlage:Convert. First referred to in 1283, the pale can still be discerned today.

In 1658, a comprehensive Parliamentary survey found Lancaster Great Park (the name given to Ashdown Forest from 1372 to 1672 after it was granted to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by Edward III) to have an area of Vorlage:Convert (5,662 hectares).

In 1693 the Forest assumed its present-day shape when rather more than half its area, 55%, was assigned by commissioners for enclosure and improvement by private landowners, while the remainder, much of which lay on the periphery of the forest close to existing settlements, was set aside as common land. Many present-day references to Ashdown Forest, particularly by the Board of Conservators and in legal, statutory and scientific documents and designations, treat the Forest as synonymous and co-terminous with this residual common land, which is distributed in a rather fragmentary way around the ancient forest. This can lead to confusion: according to one authority "when people speak of Ashdown Forest, they may mean either a whole district of heaths and woodland that includes many private estates to which there is no public access, or they may be talking of the [common land] where the public are free to roam".

Most of today's common land lies within the medieval pale, although one tract, near Chelwood Beacon, acquired quite recently by the Conservators, extends outside. The Conservators have acquired other tracts in recent years as suitable opportunities have arisen and incorporated them into the forest, for example at Chelwood Vachery. According to the definition used by the Conservators, which relates to the land for which they have statutory responsibility, the area of Ashdown Forest is Vorlage:Convert.

Statutory Designations

Reflecting its ecological importance in the UK and Europe, Ashdown Forest is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), a Special Protection Area (SPA) and a Special Area of Conservation (SAC). The first is a UK designation first made in 1953 in recognition of the Forest's unique ecology and reaffirmed in 1986. The latter two designations have been made under EU directives relating to the protection of birds and habitats respectively. The forest's importance on the European level is furthermore underlined by its membership of the Natura 2000 network, which brings together Europe's most precious and threatened wildlife sites.

Ashdown Forest also lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Though this is not a statutory designation, Ashdown Forest forms part of the Western Ouse Streams and Ashdown Forest Biodiversity Opportunity Area. It is thus a subject of the Sussex Biodiversity Action Plan, which aims to focus conservation bodies, local government and statutory agencies on work to conserve and enhance the habitats and species of Sussex.

The area of Ashdown Forest covered by the different statutory designations varies but in all cases is greater than that the area administered by the Conservators. The Ashdown Forest Site of Special Scientific Interest covers Vorlage:Convert, but this is mainly because in addition to the Forest land covered by the Conservators it also includes the Ministry of Defence's Pippingford Park Dry Training Area, which accounts for 11% (Vorlage:Convert) of the designated area, Hindleap Warren, Broadstone Warren, and Sussex Wildlife Trust's Old Lodge Local Nature Reserve, which covers Vorlage:Convert. Similarly, the EU Special Protection Area (relating to protection of birds) covers Vorlage:Convert, while the EU Special Area of Conservation (relating to conservation of habitats) covers Vorlage:Convert.

Geology and soils

A geological north-south cross-section through the Wealden dome some Vorlage:Convert east of Ashdown Forest

Ashdown Forest is positioned centrally within the great Weald-Artois Anticline, a denuded geological dome stretching from south-east England into northern France that was created soon after the end of the Cretaceous as a result of the Alpine orogeny.

The Forest is underlain predominantly by the Ashdown Sand formation, the oldest layer of the Lower Cretaceous Hastings Beds that form the core of the anticline, while the Forest is itself situated on a local dome, the Crowborough Anticline.

The Ashdown Sands formation is 500-700 feet thick and consists of fine-grained, silty interbedded sandstones and siltstones with subordinate amounts of shale and mudstone. The Ashdown Sands and the other components of the Hastings Beds (Wadhurst Clay and Tunbridge Wells Sand) are now thought to be dominantly flood-plain deposits laid down by rivers and not, as once believed, the deposits of successive deltas that grew into a freshwater lake of the early Cretaceous era.

The relatively resistant Ashdown Sand formation has been exposed as a consequence of the stripping away by erosion of layer after layer of the Weald-Artois dome. It is the oldest geological formation that outcrops in the Weald (excepting a few outcrops of the Jurassic Purbeck Beds in the east). As a result, when looking north or south across the Weald from Ashdown's ridge-tops, successively younger geological formations, including the Greensand Ridge, the undulating wooded lowlands of the Weald Clay, and the chalk escarpments of the North Downs and South Downs, may be seen stretching away to the horizon (see diagram at right).

Much of the iron ore that provided the raw material for the Wealden iron industry, including Ashdown Forest, was obtained from the Wadhurst Clay, which geologically is sandwiched between the Ashdown Sands and Tunbridge Wells Sands, in which it occurs as both nodules and in tabular masses. Outcrops of Wadhurst Clay are distributed discontinuously in a horseshoe shape around the Forest. Beyond, Ashdown Forest is encircled by an extensive district of hilly, wooded countryside formed on Tunbridge Wells sandstone.

Like the rest of the Weald, Ashdown lay beyond the southern limits of Quaternary ice sheets. But the whole area was subject at times to a periglacial environment that contributed to its geology and landforms.

Ashdown Forest's sandstone geology is a major determinant of its ecology and landscape. The Ashdown Sands, combined with a local climate that is generally wetter, cooler and windier than the surrounding area owing to the forest's elevation, which rises from Vorlage:Convert to over Vorlage:Convert above sea level, give rise to sandy, largely podzolic soils that are characteristically acid, clay, and nutrient-poor. On these poor, infertile soils have developed heathland, valley mires and damp woodland. These conditions have never favoured cultivation and have been a barrier to agricultural improvement.

Ecology

Kings Standing, Ashdown Forest

Ashdown Forest is one of the largest single continuous blocks of lowland heath, semi-natural woodland and valley bog in south-east England. Heathland predominates: of its 2472 ha of common land, 55% (1365 ha) is heathland while 40% (997 ha) is mixed woodland. The national importance of the Forest's lowland heathland is highlighted by the general decline in English lowland heathland since the 19th century. Within the county of East Sussex itself, the heathland area has shrunk by 50% over the last 200 years, and most of what remains is in Ashdown Forest.

Flora

Heathland

Ashdown Forest is noted for its profusion of heathland plants and flowers, such as the rare Marsh Gentian, but it also provides other distinctive or unusual plant habitats.

The extensive areas of dry heath are dominated by ling Calluna vulgaris, bell heather Erica cinerea and dwarf gorse Ulex minor. Important lichen communities include Pycnothelia papillaria. Bracken Pteridium aquilinum is dominant over large areas. On the damper heath, cross-leaved heath Erica tetralix becomes dominant with deer-grass Trichophorum cespitosum. The heath and bracken communities form a mosaic with acid grassland dominated by purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea mingled with many specialised heathland plants such as petty whin Genista anglica, creeping willow sp. Salicaceae and heath spotted orchid Dactylorhiza maculata.

In the wet areas are found several species of sphagnum moss together with bog asphodel Narthecium ossifragum, common cotton-grass Eriophorum angustifolium and specialities such as marsh gentian Gentiana pneumonanthe, ivy-leaved bell flower Wahlenbergia hederacea, white-beaked sedge Rhynchospora alba and marsh club moss Lycopodiella inundata. The Marsh Gentian, noted for its bright blue trumpet-like flowers, has a flowering season lasting from July well into October and is found in about a dozen colonies.

Gorse Ulex europaeus, silver birch Betula pendula, pendunculate oak Quercus robur and scots pine Pinus sylvestris are scattered across the heath, in places forming extensive areas of secondary woodland and scrub. Older woodlands consist of beech Fagus sylvatica and sweet chestnut Castanea sativa. These contain bluebell Hyacinthinoides non-scripta, bilberry Vaccinium myrtillus, the hard fern Blechnum spicant and honeysuckle Lonicera periclymenum with birds-nest orchid Neottia nidus-avis and violet helleborine Epipactis purpurata found particularly under beech. In the woodlands can also be found wood anemone Anemone nemorosa and common wood sorrel Oxalis acetosella.

Friends Clump

Streams and ponds

Forest streams, often lined by alder trees Alnus glutinosa, grey sallow Salix cinerea, birch and oak, cut through the soft sandstone forming steep-sided valleys (ghylls) that are sheltered from winter frosts and remain humid in summer, creating conditions more familiar in the Atlantic-facing western coastal regions of Britain. Uncommon bryophytes such as the liverwort Nardia compressa and a range of ferns including the mountain fern Oreopteris limbosperma and the hay-scented buckler fern Dryopteris aemula thrive in this “Atlantic” microclimate.

The damming of streams, digging for marl, and quarrying have produced several large ponds containing, particularly in former marl pits, localised rafts of broad-leaved pondweed Potamogeton natans, beds of bulrush (reedmace) Typha latifolia and water horsetail Equisetum fluviatile.

Woodland

Woodland covers nearly Vorlage:Convert of the Forest, 40% of its area Most of the woodland is young and contains few older trees. In particular, there is little Ancient Woodland, defined as woodland that has been continuously wooded since 1600, though some wooded ghylls do contain older trees and there are a few individual old trees, especially beech, that may mark former boundaries. The two most common forms of Forest woodland are oak woods on acid brown earth soils, including hazel and chestnut coppice (62% of the total woodland area), and birch woods with oak in degenerating heathlands (27%). Alder trees growing in wet and waterlogged peaty soils account for about 1% of the woodland, while birch and willow trees growing in wet areas each account for less than 1%. Beechwoods growing on acid brown earth soils account for another 3%.

The clumps of Scots pine that form such a distinctive, iconic hilltop feature of Ashdown Forest were mostly planted in 1825 by the de la Warr family, Lords of the Manor, to provide habitats for blackgame and possibly to add picturesque features to the barren landscape. 20th century plantings comprise Macmillan Clump near Chelwood Gate (commemorating former British prime-minister Harold Macmillan, who lived at Birch Grove, on the edge of the Forest at Chelwood Gate), Kennedy Clump (commemorating a visit to the area by John F. Kennedy, when he stayed with Macmillan), Millenium Clump and Friends Clump, planted in 1973 to mark the Year of the Tree.

Fauna

Birds

Important populations of heath and woodland birds are found on the forest, notably Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata (the Forest has all-year resident populations of this, Britain's scarcest heathland bird species, which has seen a resurgence since the early 1990s) and Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus. Because of this, it has been designated as a European Union Special Protection Area and it is a popular destination for bird-watchers.

The Forest contains four main bird habitats:

• Open lowland heath, with various species of gorse and heather: Dartford Warbler Sylvia undata, Stonechat Saxicola rubecola and Meadow Pipit Anthus trivialis; in the summer, Skylark Alauda arvensis, Linnet Carduelis cannabina, Yellowhammer Emberiza citrinella and Cuckoo Cuculus canorus; and in winter, rarely, Hen Harrier Circus cyaneus.
• Open areas of grassland, heather or gorse, with some bogs, interspersed with single trees or clumps of trees, particularly Scots Pine: Lesser redpoll Carduelis cabaret, Goldcrest Regulus regulus; in the summer, Woodlark Lullula arborea, Tree Pipit Anthus sylvestris, European Nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus, Common Redstart Phoenicurus phoenicurus, Spotted flycatcher Muscicapa striata, Common Snipe Gallinago gallinago, Eurasian Hobby Falco subbuteo, Eurasian Woodcock Scolopax rusticola, and Yellowhammer; in spring and autumn, Wheatear Oenanthe oenanthe, Whinchat Saxicola rubetra, Common crossbill Loxia curvirostra; and in winter, rarely, Great Grey Shrike Lanius exubitor.
• Scrub areas, especially on the boundary between woodland and heath/grassland: Reed bunting Emberiza schoeniclus; in the summer, Turtle dove Streptopelia turtur ; in winter, Eurasian Siskin Carduelis spinus and Lesser redpoll.
• Mixed woodlands of oak, birch and sweet chestnut, often with Scots pine: Stock dove Columba oenas, Marsh tit Parus palustris, Tawny owl Strix aluco, Bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula, and Eurasian Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus; in the summer Common Firecrest Regulus ignicapillus; Common Buzzard Buteo buteo (occasional visitor).

Golden-ringed dragonfly

Insects

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. It is also an important home for the golden-ringed dragonfly, which flies from mid-June to early September. 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 by contrast plentiful, with the main food plants of its caterpillars being gorses and heathers.

Deer

Deer have been a feature of Ashdown Forest particularly since its impaling as a royal hunting park in the 13th century. Red deer, an essential part of Wealden culture as long as 6-8,000 years ago, and Fallow deer, already present in Sussex in the Romano-British era and particularly favoured by the Normans for hunting, were both hunted here until the 17th century. By the end of the 17th century Red deer had disappeared completely while Fallow deer had declined to very low numbers, the poor condition of the forest pale having allowed them to escape. Fallow deer returned in the 20th century, probably as a result of escapes from a local deer park. Also present are Roe deer (the only native deer roaming the forest), Muntjac and Sika deer.

The population of Fallow deer has grown sharply in the last three decades, and they now number in their thousands. Many are involved in collisions with motor vehicles on local roads as they move around the Forest to feed at dawn and dusk; many are killed. In 2009 the Forest rangers dealt with 244 deer casualties compared with 266 the year before. However, this is likely to be a significant underestimate as the rangers do not deal with all the casualties that occur. The Board of Conservators accepts the need to reduce the deer population and is working with major neighbouring private landowners on measures to cull the deer.

Landscape

Ashdown Forest viewed from the gardens of Standen house

Ashdown Forest lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, "...one of the best surviving, intact medieval landscapes in Northern Europe". This landscape is characterised by rolling hills, steep-sided ghyll streams, sandstone outcrops, nationally-high woodland cover, many interconnected ancient woods, narrow sunken lanes, scattered farmsteads and hamlets, small irregular-shaped fields, and open heaths. Ashdown Forest is the greatest example of the latter.

The Forest reaches its highest altitude of Vorlage:Convert above sea level at Greenwood Gate Clump near King's Standing. From its hilltops there are expansive views across the High Weald in all directions, but particularly northwards toward the Greensand Ridge and beyond to the chalk escarpment of the North Downs, and southwards to the chalk escarpment of the South Downs—a distance between horizons of about Vorlage:Convert.

Ashdown is the most extensive and best preserved of the forests that occupied the Forest Ridge of the High Weald, which constitute important remnants of the great Wealden forest, Anderida, of Roman and Saxon times. From west to east these forests were St Leonard's Forest, Worth, Ashdown, Waterdown, South Frith Wood and Dallington; all remain in existence today, apart from South Frith Wood.

Ashdown Forest is essentially a man-made landscape. The long-standing predominance of heathland over woodland owes much to human intervention over thousands of years. In this respect, it reflects the development of heathland in Britain generally, where the earliest evidence of heathland dates to Mesolithic times, before the introduction of agriculture, and the large-scale emergence of heathlands took place in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. In Anglo-Saxon times heathland was much more prominent than it is today; indeed, according to Oliver Rackham, the beginnings of Wealden heathland, including Ashdown, which he terms a heathland Forest, can be traced back to before the Norman Conquest.

Ashdown Forest probably contained large areas of heath in medieval times. This would not have been unusual, as many of England's medieval forests consisted predominantly of heathland. For example, Sherwood Forest, in the Midlands, which was first described as a Forest in 1154, had at most one-third of its area recorded as woodland in Domesday Book, and by the end of the 13th century was a vast heath incorporating a number of woods and parks with no more than a quarter of it being woodland. But unlike other heathlands in England, which have largely disappeared in the last 200 years, Ashdown's has largely survived. It now represents one of England's most extensive and important areas of lowland heathland, with the associated distinctive, often rare, heathland flora and fauna. Ashdown Forest's 1,500 ha of lowland heathland make it the largest area of this threatened habitat in south-east England.

The Forest's Commoners have played an important role in maintaining the Forest's heathland. From medieval times until quite recently they would graze large numbers of livestock on the Forest, which suppressed the growth of trees and scrub. 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 the Forest was also being grazed by almost 2,700 swine. Other activities of the Commoners also contributed to preserving the heathland, such as the cutting of trees for firewood and other uses, collection of bracken for livestock bedding, and periodic heathland burning.

The large local iron industry, which grew very rapidly in Tudor times and continued to flourish in the early Stuart period, also had a major impact through its exploitation of the Forest's woodlands to feed the many local furnaces and forges. The loss of much of the tree cover from the fringes of the forest during the 16th century has been attributed at least in part to the rapid growth of the industry following the introduction from France of blast furnaces (from 1490 onwards) with their huge demand for charcoal. For example, large-scale tree cutting took place to feed the iron works of Ralph Hogge to the south of the forest between Buxted and Maresfield. The loss of trees caused much public concern: as early as 1520 it was lamented 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" . Although it has been argued by some that sustainable woodland management through coppicing would necessarily have been introduced in the area to maintain the supply of charcoal, it seems that the industry continued to denude Ashdown Forest into the 17th century, so that by 1632 there was little great wood left, and by 1658 none, while by 1632 coppices were slight and much affected by illicit cutting. The impact of the local iron industry on the forest was curtailed however by its rapid decline during the 17th century and disappearance in the 18th century.

Ashdown Forest's landscape in the early 19th century was famously described by William Cobbett in his Sussex Journal entry of 8 January 1822:

"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."

At the start of the 20th century the forest was virtually treeless, apart from the picturesque clumps of Scots Pine that had been planted on its hill-tops in the early 19th century and the woods remaining in its deeper valleys and ghylls, and its heathland was the largest in south-east England. However, after World War II a sharp decline in livestock grazing by the commoners owing to economic and social factors (see below) led to a rapid and substantial loss of heathland to scrub and trees, particularly birch and pine. The increasing amounts of road traffic across the forest, with the consequent loss of animals in road traffic collisions, also became a major deterrent to grazing, with the last of the free-ranging livestock of the commoners being removed in 1985. As a consequence the proportion of heathland in the forest has declined greatly in the last sixty years, from 90% in 1947 to 60% in 2007.

Conservation

Ashdown Forest's Hebridean sheep flock awaiting shearing

The post-war decline in the exploitation of the forest by the Commoners forced the Board of Conservators to move from a regulatory to a more interventionist role in Forest affairs in order to prevent any further loss of the extensive heathlands that give the Forest its distinctive open landscapes and rare wildlife habitats.

Today, the Conservators' publicly stated aim is to maintain the Forest's proportion of heathland to woodland at 60:40. This work is being assisted by substantial public funding from a central government agency, Natural England, under a ten-year Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement. Signed in August 2006, this agreement requires the Conservators to restore the Forest heathland to "favourable condition". It is the largest such scheme in south-east England.

The Conservators have taken various steps to stem the invasion of the heathland by scrub, trees and bracken. Regular mowing of bracken is carried out: an area of 266 ha out of the 400 ha on the Forest has been mown twice a year since 2000. Large areas of the highly invasive Rhododendron ponticum have been cleared, initially funded by the Forestry Commission, and now carried on by local volunteers. Birch and other tree saplings are cut down in the winter.

The Conservators have taken steps to promote livestock grazing on the Forest. This is considered to be a cheaper, more effective and more sustainable way of restoring and maintaining heathland than the use of mowing machinery. Sheep (which are a recent introduction, only being a Common right on the Forest since 1900) are particularly useful because they will preferentially eat coarse grass and scrub and will ignore heather, and they will also graze in places that are difficult to mow. In 1996 the Secretary of State for the Environment gave permission for a 550 ha (1359 acre) fenced enclosure, representing about one-third of the Forest's 1500 ha of heathland, to be created in the south and west Chases to allow Commoners to graze their livestock in safety.

The enclosure of the common lands of the Forest with fencing, however, no matter how discreetly done, was and remains somewhat controversial. In 2007, the Conservators commenced a close-shepherded grazing pilot project, funded by the HLS scheme, in which a flock of Hebridean sheep was guided by a shepherd to graze the unenclosed heathland. Among the advantages of this approach are that no fencing is required and grazing can be targeted on the most over-grown areas. Among the disadvantages were its high labour intensity and low impact. In 2010, following completion of the project, by which time the flock had grown to over 300 sheep, the Conservators decided to continue close-shepherded grazing as an integral part of their management of the Forest's heathland.

Recreation and leisure

Cyclists crossing Ashdown Forest

Ashdown Forest is the largest public access space in south-east England, and the largest area of open, uncultivated countryside. A 2008 visitor survey estimated that at least 1.35 million visits are made each year. The most common reason given for visiting the Forest was its "openness". Most visitors (85%) coming by car travelled 10km or less and, interestingly, there were 62 dogs for every 100 visitors.

Despite such large numbers of visitors, the Forest has retained its celebrated tranquillity and sense of openness. The commons are freely open to the public, who are attracted by the large, elevated expanse of unspoiled heaths and woodlands where they may walk, picnic or simply sit while taking in the glorious views. Various bye-laws passed by the Conservators help protect the Forest environment for the public good, prohibiting such activities as, for example, mountain biking, off-road driving of motor vehicles, camping, and the lighting of fires.

Travelling to Ashdown Forest

Most visitors come by car, and access is straightforward. The Forest is crossed by a major road, the A22, which provides access from the M25 and M23 motorways. The Conservators have provided, as a traffic management measure designed to protect the Forest from the visual intrusion of motor vehicles, 48 unobtrusive car parks, and picnic areas. The nearest railway station is at East Grinstead, which receives frequent train services from London. Two bus services cross the forest: the 261 service from East Grinstead railway station to Uckfield stops at Nutley, Chelwood Gate, Wych Cross, the Ashdown Forest Centre and Colemans Hatch (two-hourly; no service on Sundays or public holidays), while the 270 service from East Grinstead railway station to Haywards Heath stops at Wych Cross and Chelwood Gate (hourly service, every day). London Gatwick Airport is about 25 minutes away by car.

Visitor and tourist information

The Ashdown Forest Centre (see below) is the main visitor centre for the forest. Tourist information points may be found at Ashdown Forest Llama Park, Forest Row Community Centre and Perryhill Orchards, Hartfield. The Forest's principal tourism organisation is the Ashdown Forest Tourism Association.

Recreational, sports and leisure activities

The Forest is very popular with walkers, and all its common land is open to them. Two long-distance footpaths, the Vanguard Way and Wealdway cross the forest and meet near Old Lodge. The Wealdway passes through Five Hundred Acre wood, the Hundred Acre Wood of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The Ashdown Forest Centre produces a series of leaflets detailing interesting walks in various parts of the forest, which may also be downloaded from its website.

Ashdown Forest contains Vorlage:Convert of permitted tracks that may be ridden by horse once an annual permit has been obtained from the Conservators. The main horse-riding organisation is the Ashdown Forest Riding Association, which has around 200 members.

The Forest, with its attractive landscapes, vistas and hills, is a popular destination for road cyclists, races and cyclosportives such as the Hell of the Ashdown. Former Tour de France rider Sean Yates lives at Forest Row and has taken Lance Armstrong training here. Off-road cycling and mountain biking is prohibited for environmental reasons, except along public bridleways. A local pressure group is campaigning for this ban to be lifted.

The Royal Ashdown Forest Golf Club occupies a large area of leasehold land in the northern part of the Forest near Forest Row. It is a traditional members' club founded in 1888 at the instigation of Earl de la Warr, Lord of the Manor, who became its first president. Its two 18-hole heathland courses are notable for the absence of bunkers (at the insistence of the Conservators). As elsewhere in Ashdown Forest, trees and bracken scrub have invaded following the cessation of grazing and decreased wood cutting by the Commoners, and the club is working with the Conservators to restore the golf courses to their original heathland character.

The principal hotel within the Forest is the Ashdown Park Hotel & Country Club, a listed 19th century mansion house set in 186 acres.

Visitor attractions

The Ashdown Forest Centre

The Ashdown Forest Centre

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

Vachery Forest Garden

Landscaped in 1925 by Col. Gavin Jones for F.J. Nettlefold, this 'lost' forest garden is situated in a remote, secluded steep-sided valley near Wych Cross. It was acquired by the Conservators in 1994 and is now undergoing restoration. Already uncovered are a 250 metre gorge constructed using limestone brought from Cheddar Gorge, many unusual trees and a string of small lakes connected by sluices and weirs. The garden, which is open to the public, is part of Chelwood Vachery, a medieval estate dating back to at least 1229, and whose name may come from the French vache, referring to the grazing of cattle here by Michelham Priory. A leaflet describing a walk through Chelwood Vachery is available from the Ashdown Forest Centre. The nearest car-park is Trees on the A22 road between Wych Cross and Nutley.

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

Nutley Windmill, which stands just north of the Nutley to Duddleswell road, is thought to be about 300 years old and is a rare example of an open-trestle post mill (the whole body of the mill can be rotated on its central post to face the wind). It 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 in fact a grave, but a memorial to the six man crew of a Wellington bomber of 142 Squadron who were killed when it crashed in the forest on the morning of 31 July 1941 on its return from a raid on Cologne during World War II. The memorial, which is a simple stone-walled enclosure on the heathland west of Duddleswell, shelters a white cross surrounded by a tiny garden of remembrance and was erected by the mother of Sergeant P.V.R. Sutton, who was aged 24 at the time of his death. A short public service takes place each year on Remembrance Sunday when a wreath is laid by an Ashdown Forest Ranger, at the request of Mrs Sutton, together with one from the Ashdown Forest Riding Association. The Ashdown Forest Centre has published a circular walk to the memorial from Hollies car park.

Newbridge Furnace

At the foot of Kidd's Hill, in woods lying west of the road from Coleman's Hatch to Gills Lap, are the largely grassed-over remains of a 15th century ironworks that mark the beginnings of Britain's modern iron and steel industry. A dedication placed at the site by the Wealden Iron Research Group reads: "Newbridge Furnace. At the behest of King Henry VII, the first English blast furnace, for the smelting of iron, was established in this place. 13 December A.D. 1496. Here, the water from the pond, held back by the dam, or bay, gave power to the bellows of the furnace to make cast iron; and to a finery where the 'great water hammer' enabled immigrant French workers to forge bars of wrought iron. The works had a modest output, which cannot have exceeded 150 tons of iron a year. Early products included the ironwork of gun carriages for a military campaign in Scotland, and were soon to number guns and shot as well. From small beginnings, in this secluded corner of Sussex, grew the ironworks of the Weald, and subsequently the iron and steel industry throughout Great Britain."

Ashdown Forest Llama Park

Situated south-east of Wych Cross on the A22 main road, 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.

The Forest pale

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The Hatch Inn, Colemans Hatch, at an entrance to Ashdown Forest.

Possibly as early as the 13th century, Ashdown Forest was enclosed as a hunting park, mainly for deer, by a 38 kilometre (23 mile) long pale. This consisted of an earth bank 4–5 feet high surmounted by an oak paling fence with a deep ditch on the forest side that allowed deer to enter but not to leave. It enclosed an area of over 5,300 hectares (20.5 square miles). Entry was via 34 gates and hatches, gates being used for access by wheeled vehicles, commoners' animals and mounted groups, hatches by pedestrians. These names survive in local place-names such as Chuck Hatch and Chelwood Gate. Some of these entrances were, and still are, marked by pubs, for example the 18th century Hatch Inn at Coleman's Hatch, which occupies three former cottages believed to date to 1430 that later may have housed ironworkers from the nearby blast furnace at Newbridge.

It is not known precisely when the pale was built. Forest management accounts of 1283 refer to the cost of repairing the pale and building new lengths. However, the granting of the "Free-chase of Ashdon" to John of Gaunt in 1372 and its renaming as Lancaster Great Park (see below) implies that the Forest may only have been recently enclosed (chase denoted an open hunting ground, park an enclosed one).

The condition of the Forest pale seems to have deteriorated significantly during the Tudor period. This coincided with, and may be partly linked to, the rapid growth under the Tudors of the local iron-making industry with its huge demand for raw materials in and around Ashdown Forest, such as charcoal and ironstone. This ultimately led to an appeal to King James, soon after his accession to the throne, for Ashdown's forest fences to be repaired in order to preserve the King's game. However, the pale seems to have fallen into almost complete disrepair by the end of the 17th century.

The bank and ditch associated with the pale are still visible in places around Ashdown Forest today, for example at Legsheath and adjacent to the car-park for Pooh Sticks Bridge on Chuck Hatch Lane.

Winnie-the-Pooh

Poohsticks Bridge in Ashdown Forest

Ashdown Forest is famous as the setting for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, written by A. A. 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 and inspired by Ashdown Forest.

Alan Milne, a writer who was born and lived in London, bought a country retreat for himself and his family at Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield, East Sussex, in 1925. This old farmhouse was situated on the banks of a tributary of the River Medway and lay just beyond the northern boundary of Ashdown Forest, about a mile from the ancient Forest entrance at Chuck Hatch. The family would stay at Cotchford Farm at weekends and in the Easter and summer holidays. It was easy to walk from the farmhouse up onto the Forest, and these walks were frequently family occasions which would see Milne, his wife, Dorothy, his son, Christopher Robin, and his son's nanny, Olive, going "in single file threading the narrow paths that run through the heather". Christopher, who was an only child born in 1920 and whose closest childhood relationship was with his nanny, spent his early years happily exploring the Forest. It is the Ashdown Forest landscape, and Christopher's reports of his experiences and discoveries there, that provided inspiration and material for A.A. Milne's stories. As Christopher Milne wrote later: "Anyone who has read the stories knows the Forest and doesn't need me to describe it. 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, a dense beech wood that Christopher would sometimes walk through to reach the Forest, became Hundred Acre Wood. The hilltop of Gills Lap, crowned by pine trees and visible from miles around, became Galleon's Lap. The North Pole and Gloomy Place are in Wren’s Warren valley, a short walk north-east of Gills Lap, as is The Dark and Mysterious Forest.

Furthermore, the landscapes depicted in Shepard’s illustrations for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, which are very evocative of Ashdown Forest, can in many cases be matched up to actual views, allowing for a degree of artistic licence. Shepard's sketches of pine trees and other Forest scenes are now exhibited at the V&A Museum in London.

A free leaflet, “Pooh Walks from Gills Lap”, which is available from the Ashdown Forest Centre and downloadable from its website, describes a walk that takes in many locations familiar from the Pooh stories including Galleon's Lap, The Enchanted Place, the Heffalump Trap and Lone Pine, North Pole, 100 Aker Wood and Eeyore’s Sad and Gloomy Place.

Memorial plaque dedicated to A. A. Milne and E. H. Shepard at Gills Lap

A memorial plaque to Milne and Shepard can be found at Gills Lap. Its heading is a quotation from the Pooh stories: "...and by and by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap". The dedication reads: "Here at Gills Lap are commemorated A.A. Milne 1882-1956 and E.H. Shepard 1879-1976 who collaborated in the creation of "Winnie-the-Pooh" and so captured the magic of Ashdown Forest and gave it to the world".

Pooh Sticks Bridge, which is open to the public, lies outside the Forest on the northern edge of Posingford Wood, near Chuck Hatch. A path leads to the bridge from a car-park on Chuck Hatch Lane, just off the B2026 Maresfield to Hartfield road. The original bridge was built in 1907, restored in 1979 and completely rebuilt in 1999. So popular is the game of Poohsticks that the surrounding area has been denuded of twigs and small branches by the many visitors.

Pooh Corner, situated on the High Street in Hartfield village, sells Winnie-the-Pooh related products and offers information for visitors.

History

Origins

Ashdown Forest's origins lie as a Norman deer hunting forest, dating back to the period immediately following the Norman conquest of 1066. Prior to that, it formed an unnamed part of a much larger area of dense, impenetrable, and sparsely populated oak woodland, extending for Vorlage:Convert between the North and South Downs and for over Vorlage:Convert from east to west between Kent and Hampshire, that was known in Saxon times as Andredes weald ("the forest of Andred", from the name of the Roman fort at Pevensey, Anderida), from which the name of the physiographic region of south-east England in which Ashdown Forest is situated, the Weald, is derived..

Ashdown Forest is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 but, lying as it did within the Forest of Pevensel (sic) in the Rape of Pevensey, it had already been granted by William the Conqueror to his half-brother Robert, Count of Mortain. This strategically and economically important Rape was awarded, along with several hundred manors across England, in recognition of Robert's support during the invasion. There were two important conditions: the king could keep and hunt deer on the forest, while the commoners - tenant farmers who had smallholdings near the forest - could continue to use it to graze their livestock and cut wood for fuel and bracken for livestock bedding.

The forest was owned by the Lords of Pevensey Castle - various Norman nobles - for most of the period until the reign of Henry III, when, in 1268, it was vested in the Crown in perpetuity. The forest was used for deer hunting by Edward II, 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. From then for the next 300 years, until 1672, it was known as Lancaster Great Park, though the park reverted to the Crown with the rest of the Duchy of Lancaster after the Duke's death in 1399.

In 1561 Richard Sackville was granted the "mastership of the Forest and keepership of the wild beasts therein", thus beginning a family involvement that lasted over 400 years. The Sackvilles later became Earls of Dorset and it was in 1605, under James I, that Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, became Lord of the Manor of Duddleswell (the manor within which Lancaster Great Park lay). The Earls and Dukes of Dorset remained Lords of the Manor until the male line died out in 1815, at which point the freehold passed to the related de la Warr (pronounced "Delaware") family, who retained it until 1988.

The 1693 land division

In 1693 more than half of Ashdown Forest was taken into private hands. Repeated attempts during the 17th century to enclose and improve the forest, whose condition had deteriorated by the Restoration in 1660 to a state where "the whole forest [had been] laid open and made waste", had been strongly opposed by the commoners and by the owners of neighbouring estates who claimed right of pasture there. After the Restoration it was disafforested by letters patent of Charles II and granted, in 1671, to the Earl of Bristol and then to the Earl of Dorset and others whose efforts to enclose and develop the heathland were frustrated "by the crossness of the neighbourhood". In 1689, the Earl of Dorset brought a legal suit against 133 defendants led by one John Newnham who claimed rights of common on the forest having exercised them "from time out of mind". Commissioners appointed by the Duchy Court to divide up the 13,991 acres (5,662 ha) of forest made their award on 4 December 1693, setting aside 6,400 acres (2,590 ha), mostly in the vicinity of farms and villages, for the commoners. Here they were given sole right of pasturage and the right to cut birch, alder and willow. But they were excluded from the rest of the forest, 55 per cent of its area, which was assigned for "inclosure and improvement". As a result, the common land of Ashdown Forest today is highly fragmented and irregular in shape, broken up by large tracts of privately-owned land. Some of the largest enclosures, such as Hindleap Warren, Prestridge Warren, Broadstone Warren and Crowborough Warren, were created for intensive rabbit farming. Other large enclosures include Pippingford Park, today a military training area, and Five Hundred Acre Wood. 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. That said, the contrast between the areas of common land, which are predominantly heathland, and the privately-held lands, which are generally either quite heavily wooded or cleared for pasture, and which in cases cover large areas within the old forest pale, is stark.

The 1876 dispute

In 1876-82 a further challenge to commoners' rights, which became known as the Ashdown Forest Dispute, 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 a keeper employed by the Lord of the Manor, the Earl De La Warr. In a test case, the earl challenged the right of Hale and Miles to cut and take away litter, claiming that it could only be taken away from the forest in the stomachs of their animals. 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.

Sale into public ownership

In the 1980s the Lord of the Manor, the 10th Earl de la Warr, offered Ashdown Forest for sale direct to the local authority, East Sussex County Council, if they would buy it; otherwise he would probably sell the forest piecemeal on the open market. On 25 November 1988 this threat to split up the forest was averted when, with the benefit of donations from many sources, including the proceeds of a public appeal supported by Christopher Robin Milne that raised £175,000, East Sussex County Council purchased the freehold of Ashdown Forest from the executors of the earl, who had died the previous February. The freehold was then vested by the council in a newly-created charitable trust, the Ashdown Forest Trust.

Iron working

Ashdown Forest formed an important part of the Wealden iron industry that operated from pre-Roman times until the early 18th century. The industry reached its peak in the two periods when the Weald was the main iron-producing region of Britain, namely in the first 200 years of the Roman occupation (1st to 3rd centuries AD) and during Tudor and early Stuart times. Iron-smelting in the former period was based on bloomery technology, while the latter depended for its rapid growth on the blast furnace, when the Ashdown area became the first in England to use this technology.

The Forest was a particularly favourable location for iron production because of the presence of iron-ore in the local geology of sandstone Ashdown Beds and overlying Wadhurst Clay, the availability of large expanses of woodland for the production of charcoal, and deep, steep-sided valleys that had been incised into the relatively soft sandstone which together with locally high rainfall made it practical to dam streams to form lakes to provide water power for furnaces and forges.

Iron Age and Roman Period

When the Romans invaded Britain in AD 43 the Weald already had a well-established tradition of iron-making, using very small, clay bloomery furnaces for iron-smelting. The pre-Roman settlement pattern was one of sparse occupation based on major defended enclosures along the northern edge of the High Weald with smaller enclosures deeper within it, such as the hill-fort at Garden Hill. The association of these smaller enclosures with iron-making and other evidence suggest that Iron Age colonizers saw the Weald primarily as a source of iron.

The Romans also saw the Weald's economic potential for iron-making and with growing markets in south-east England generated by the building of towns, villas and farms the industry grew, achieving high levels of output at its peak. There is evidence in Ashdown Forest of Roman bloomeries at Garden Hill, Pippingford Park and elsewhere. Like other sites in the western Weald, these are thought to have been private, commercial operations set up by entrepreneurs to produce iron goods for nearby civilian markets. This was in contrast to Roman iron production in the eastern Weald, which is thought to have been state-controlled and linked to the needs of the British Fleet, the Classis Britannica, and which may have been an Imperial Estate.

The transition from Late Iron Age to Roman Era iron production in the Forest, as elsewhere in the Weald, may have been quite smooth. Bloomery production was already well-established and this southern coastal region of Britain had already become Romanised prior to the invasion of AD 43. It has been suggested that the poorly-built Roman-era bath building at Garden Hill may indicate continuity of indigenous community and activity, and a desire to indulge in a more Romanised way of life.

The trunk road between London and Lewes, partly metalled with iron slag from local bloomeries, would have served to carry the Forest's iron products to the Roman province's pre-eminent mercantile centre at London, and the densely populated agricultural areas of the South Downs and the coastal plain around Chichester. It is likely that the iron goods transported to London and elsewhere took the form of semi-finished products; these would then have been worked into finished products for onward distribution, including overseas.

Although the Roman iron industry flourished from the invasion to the mid 3rd century, it then declined until there was very little activity at all during the 4th century.

Saxon Period

During the period between the departure of the Romans in the early 5th century AD and the Norman Conquest iron-making in the forest - as in the Weald as a whole - seems to have taken place on only a very small scale, judging from the lack of material evidence. A primitive Middle Saxon iron-smelting furnace at Millbrook, near Nutley, which operated in the 9th century, is the only furnace from the Saxon period to have been found in the entire Weald.

Tudor and Stuart Period

The local iron industry underwent a massive resurgence in Tudor and early Stuart times as a result of the introduction of the blast furnace from northern France. Blast furnaces were much larger and more permanent structures than bloomeries, and produced much greater quantities of iron. They correspondingly made much greater demands on local resources, in particular wood, iron ore and water (to operate the bellows and forges in what was now a two-stage smelting and forging process). Because of the huge demand for water, they were generally located in deep valleys where streams could be dammed to provide a sufficent, consistent flow. Such resources were things that Ashdown Forest and the surrounding area possessed in abundance.

Ashdown Forest became the site of Britain's second blast furnace when the works at Newbridge, south of Coleman's Hatch at the foot of Kidd's Hill, began operation in 1496. (Britain's earliest known blast furnace, a few miles away at Queenstock, Buxted, began operation at the end of 1490). The Newbridge furnace, constructed at the commission of Henry VII for the production of heavy metalwork for gun carriages for his war against the Scots, was designed and initially run by French immigrants. The Crown's involvement with Newbridge continued until a replacement, larger furnace was built in 1539 on the western edge of Ashdown Forest at Stumbles. Other works set up around this time in or near the Forest include a steel forge at Pippingford Park, around 1505, and a furnace and forge at Parrock, Hartfield, in 1513. Unfortunately, there is little visible trace of any of these sites today but it is possible to visit the site of Newbridge furnace, off Kidd's Hill, where there is an information board, and to see a number of identifiable features.

The industry grew very rapidly in Ashdown Forest and elsewhere in the High Weald during the 16th century. The area became particularly noted for the casting of cannons for the British navy. The iron-master and gun founder Ralph Hogge, who in 1543 had cast the first iron cannon in England at Buxted, drew his raw materials from the southern part of the forest. The rapid expansion of the iron industry and its huge demand for raw materials, particularly the cutting of trees for making charcoal, is likely to have had a major early impact on Ashdown Forest by depleting its woodlands, although it is likely that in due course production of wood through coppice management, in common with the practice generally in the High Weald, will have been required to ensure a more sustainable supply.

The industry declined in the 17th century as a result of competition from lower-cost and higher productivity iron-producing areas in England and overseas, particularly Sweden.

Archaeology

The agger of the London-Lewes Roman road, visible at Roman Road car park, Ashdown Forest.

Ashdown Forest contains a wealth of archeological features. Absence of ploughing, predominance of heathland and lack of building development have allowed archaeological sites to survive and remain visible. More than 570 such sites have been identified, including Bronze Age round barrows, Iron Age enclosures, prehistoric field systems, iron workings from Roman times onwards, the Pale, 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. The earliest known trace of human activity in Ashdown Forest is a stone hand axe found near Gills Lap, which is thought to be about 50,000 years old. The vast majority of finds however date from the Mesolithic (11,000-7,000 BP) and onwards into the modern era.

Iron Age

The late pre-Roman Iron Age (100 BC to AD 43) saw a conspicuous reconfiguration of the settlement and economic geography of Sussex, of which one aspect was the disappearance of hill-forts from the South Downs (except Devil's Dyke) and the establishment of hill-forts in the High Weald, including one in Ashdown Forest at Garden Hill (see below). Three other hill-forts lie in close proximity at Philpots, Saxonbury and Dry Hill. The general consensus is that these hill-forts are associated with a more intensive exploitation of the iron resources of the Weald. This period also presents the first evidence for centralised ceramic production, with specialist pottery sites identified at Chelwood Gate and Horsted Keynes, both situated close to the Forest and ideally located to exploit the local potting clays. Elsewhere in Ashdown Forest there is evidence of Iron Age enclosures at Gills Lap, marked by a roundel of fir trees, and King's Standing, both situated on high hilltops. Another site, at Chelwood Gate, known as Danes Graves, shows evidence of late pre-Roman Iron Age iron working.

Garden Hill

Garden Hill, situated on a hill spur south of Colemans Hatch Road, is Ashdown Forest's most important scheduled ancient monument, containing both an Iron Age hill-fort and the remains of an important Romano-British iron-working centre. In 1972 archaeologists uncovered a small but complete 2nd century AD Romano-British stone-built bath-house. Subsequent excavations produced evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age and early pre-Roman occupation of the hill-top and uncovered remains of a late pre-Roman Iron Age and Romano-British iron-working settlement of the first, second and early 3rd centuries AD. This included pre-Roman round houses, a rectangular 2nd-century Roman timber villa to which the bath building was attached, and an almost complete pane of Roman window-glass that was later acquired by the British Museum. Both iron-making (ore roasting and smelting) and iron-working (forging) were conducted, but this is likely to have been small in scale. Later the industrial workings were levelled and replaced by the villa and other buildings of a non-industrial character, suggesting that the settlement may have operated through the 2nd century more as a managerial centre for other iron-working sites nearby, such as the small early 1st century bloomeries at Pippingford Park and Cow Park before probably becoming abandoned by the mid 3rd century. Garden Hill lies within the Ministry of Defence's Pippingford Park military training area and is not open to the public.

Roman roads and pre-Roman trackways

The London to Lewes Way, one of three Roman roads that connected London with the important Wealden iron industry, crosses Ashdown Forest in a north-south direction. The road ran in a direct line from its junction with Watling Street at Peckham in London to the South Downs on the east side of Lewes, from where it connected with routes to the densely-populated corn-growing areas of the South Downs and coastal plain, and possibly to ports trading with Roman-occupied Gaul. The main purpose of the road, apart from linking the corn-growing areas with London, was to open up Ashdown Forest and neighbouring iron-producing areas for the export of iron products to London and Gaul. Given the great importance of the iron industry to the Romans, it is likely that the road was built soon after the Roman occupation, not long after AD 100 or possibly earlier.

After crossing the Greensand Ridge the road runs virtually straight from Marlpit Hill southwards for Vorlage:Convert, entering Ashdown Forest near Chuck Hatch, reaching the top of the forest at Camp Hill, and then leaving the Forest via Duddleswell and Fairwarp. The agger varies in width (at Camp Hill it is Vorlage:Convert wide, at Five Hundred Acre Wood, Vorlage:Convert wide) and is metalled with compacted sandstone lumps and iron slag from local bloomeries. Unusually, side ditches Vorlage:Convert apart run continuously for two miles (3 km) through the forest. The remains of the road in the Forest were partly obliterated by tanks undertaking training exercises in World War II, but part of it is clearly marked out at Roman Road car park.

A secondary Roman road which passed through Wych Cross and Colemans Hatch reached the London-Lewes trunk road at Gallypot Street, Hartfield, and would probably have served to link the Romano-British iron-working complex at Garden Hill to the main road..

The north-south London-Lewes Roman road superseded an older trackway that ran from Titsey, at the foot of the Greensand Ridge, through the iron-age hillfort at Dry Hill, Forest Row, Danehill and Wivelsfield to Westmeston, at the foot of the South Downs. Across the Weald ran many old, broadly east-west trackways that followed the relatively lightly-wooded high sandy ridges. Some of these, particularly in iron-producing areas, would have formed part of the road network used by the Romans. Among the important trackways that crossed Ashdown Forest were ridgeways from Crowborough and Nutley that clearly followed the high ridges of the Forest to Chelwood Gate and Wych Cross, and which then continued westwards to West Hoathly, Selsfield, Turners Hill and beyond.

Ownership and administration

Ashdown Forest, narrowly defined as the common land set aside in 1693 plus a number of recent land acquisitions, is owned by the Ashdown Forest Trust. Ownership was vested in this charitable trust after the Forest was sold by the executors of the 10th Earl de la Warr to East Sussex County Council in November 1988. This followed a public campaign to raise funds to enable the council to make the purchase, as the alternative proposal threatened by the Earl before he died was for the Forest to be sold piecemeal into private hands.

The Forest is administered by an independent Board of Conservators. The Board was established under the Ashdown Forest Act 1885 to regulate and protect the Forest, an Act passed following the resolution of the protracted 19th century dispute between the commoners and Earl de la Warr over rights of common on the Forest. The composition of the Board has altered since it was first established; currently it has sixteen members: nine are appointed by East Sussex County Council (one of whom represents the lord of the manor, since 1988 the 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 management is carried out by the Clerk to the Conservators (also known as the Forest Superintendent) and supporting staff, including a team of forest 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 Conservators at all times 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 passed 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.

Finding adequate funding for the regulation and conservation of the Forest is a long-standing issue. The income of the Conservators in 2009-10 was £751,000, of which almost half was accounted for by funding from the government's Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) scheme, which requires the conservators to achieve certain objectives, such as restoring the heathlands to "favourable condition". Grants from the local authorities and the Ashdown Forest Trust accounted for another fifth. In 2009-10 there was a small surplus of income over expenditure (57% of which was staff costs). Cuts in local government expenditure and termination of HLS funding by 2016 present major challenges for the Conservators to deal with.

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, which has almost 1000 members. Fundraising by the Friends has helped towards the purchase of capital equipment for forest management such as motor vehicles and enabled the Conservators to buy back parcels of land within the Forest Pale for reincorporation into the Forest.

In 1994 the Conservators, with the help of funding from East Surrey County Council, purchased 28 ha (69 acres) of woodland at Chelwood Vachery (an estate that dates back to at least 1229), including an early 20th century garden and lake system, after the estate was divided up and offered for sale by its owner. The land is now undergoing restoration as a forest garden and is open to the public.

The Ashdown Forest commoners

A gate into Ashdown Forest at sunset

Historic role and impact of commoning

That Ashdown Forest today remains a large area of beautiful, predominantly open and uncultivated heathland that is accessible to the public is largely due to the actions of the commoners who, over many centuries, have exercised rights of common on the Forest and who have defended those rights against attempts by the owner of the forest, the lord of the manor, and others to limit or extinguish them. Key aspects of this were firstly the resistance of commoners in the 17th century to the wholesale enclosure of the Forest for private commercial exploitation, which resulted, in 1693, in the retention of almost half the original Forest as common land; and secondly, the protracted legal dispute in the late 19th century in which the lord of the manor sought to curtail commoners' rights, which ultimately resulted in victory for the commoners, and the formation of the Board of Conservators in 1885 to safeguard their interests and to regulate and protect the Forest. Furthermore, the predominantly heathland character of Ashdown Forest owes much to commoners' activities over many centuries. Their exploitation of the Forest, quite possibly dating back to Saxon times, through such activities as the grazing of livestock, cutting of trees, bracken and other vegetation, and periodic burning, inhibited the growth of scrub and woodland and promoted the growth of open heathland.

For clarity, it should be noted that the common land of Ashdown Forest today consists of specific areas of Forest, registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965, which only those who possess particular rights of common - commoners - are entitled to use and exploit in certain specified ways. The common land itself is owned by the lord of the manor of Duddleswell (since 1988, the Ashdown Forest Trust). Moreover, these rights of common attach to specific properties or land-holdings distributed around or in the neighbourhood of Ashdown Forest, not to the property owners or tenants themselves. It is not unusual for the latter to reside some distance away from the Forest.

It should also be noted that the commoners, historically, were not necessarily "common" people. They ranged from lowly tenants or landowners running small, subsistence farm-holdings to major landowners of high social standing. So, for example, the main protagonist on behalf of the commoners in the 19th century Ashdown Forest dispute was Bernard Hale, a barrister and Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex, while other commoners backing him included Sir Percy Maryon-Wilson Bart., the Duke of Norfolk, the 3rd Earl of Sheffield, Lady Shelley and the 3rd Baron Colchester of Kidbrooke Park.

Following the 1885 Act of Parliament that set up the current system of Forest regulation, all commoners are obliged to pay a Forest Rate, which is based on the acreage of their land-holding, to contribute towards the administration of the Forest by the Board of Conservators, and they are entitled to elect five commoners' representatives to the Board.

The rights of common

The rights of common have varied over time. Today those that remain are pasturage and herbage - the right of the commoner to graze livestock such as cattle and sheep on the forest (though, interestingly, sheep did not become commonable until the 1870s); estovers - the right to cut birch, willow and alder for use on the commoner's property or tenement as firewood for the "ancestral hearth" or for repairs to house, fences and hedges; and litter - the cutting of brake (bracken), fern or heather for the bedding of livestock and thatching of roofs.

Other rights of common have been lost. Pannage, the right to take pigs onto the Forest to feed on acorns, beech mast or other nuts, died out by 1500, possibly connected with the loss of previously extensive beech woodlands. Turbary, the right to cut turf or peat for fuel, was outlawed in 1885 because of the damage it had been causing to the forest floor.

The rights of common may be claimed by landowner or tenant, but, as already noted, they are attached to the properties they hold, not to them as individuals. The extent to which rights of common could be exercised, for example the number of animals that could be grazed on the Forest, or the amount of wood that could be cut, depended, and still depends, on the size of the property concerned.

Pastoral systems

Historically, the commoners' rights of common allowed the smallholders among 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.

Decline of commoning

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, the Commons Registration Act, which required commoners across the country to register to preserve their rights, resulted in a large drop in the number of Ashdown Forest Commoners. More than half the 1,300 Commoners, perhaps deterred by the bureaucratic process involved or apathetic, failed to register, losing for ever the rights of common that were attached to their land.

Today, 730 properties in and around Ashdown Forest retain commonable rights, but very few owners exercise their rights of common. This has affected the forest's ecology. Without human intervention, heath becomes old and woody, bracken spreads and scrubby birch and other trees invade, resulting in the loss of open heathland and of the plants and animals that rely on it. Because of this, the Conservators have in recent years moved beyond their original administrative and regulatory functions to play an increasingly active, interventionist role in conserving the Forest's heathlands.

Notable people, film and television

Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones lived at A.A. Milne's former country home at Cotchford Farm and died there in 1969. The author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, lived at Crowborough, on the eastern edge of the forest, as did the nature writer Richard Jefferies for a period while he wrote some of his famous essays. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan lived at Birch Grove, a house on the edge of the forest near Chelwood Gate; the Macmillan Clump of trees is named in his honour. Major Edward Dudley Metcalfe, the best friend and equerry of Edward VIII., lived in a grey stone house in the forest.

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.

Bibliography

• Peter Brandon: The Kent & Sussex Weald. Phillimore & Co Ltd, Chichester 2003, ISBN 1-86077-241-2. 
• Peter Brandon, Short, Brian: The South East from AD 1000. Longman, London 1990, ISBN 0-582-49245-9. 
• Garth Christian: Ashdown Forest. The Society of Friends of Ashdown Forest, 1967. 
• Cleere, Henry (1978). Roman Sussex—The Weald. In Drewett (1978), pp. 59–63.
• Henry Cleere, Crossley, David: The Iron Industry of the Weald (2nd edition). Merton Priory Press, Cardiff 1995, ISBN 1-898937-04-4. 
• Peter Drewett (Hrsg.): Archaeology in Sussex to AD 1500. Council for British Archaeology, Research Report 29, London 1978. 
• R.W. Gallois (Hrsg.): British Regional Geology: The Wealden District. Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1965, ISBN 0-11-884078-9. 
• Philip Glyn, Prendergast, Hew: Ashdown Forest, An Illustrated Guide. Essedon Press, 1995, ISBN 0-9525549-0-9. 
• Thomas Hinde: Forests of Britain. Sphere Books Ltd, 1987, ISBN 0-349-11687-3. 
• Jeremy Hodgkinson: The Wealden Iron Industry. The History Press, Stroud 2008, ISBN 978-0-7524-4573-1. 
• Peter Kirby: Forest Camera. Sweethaws Press, 1998, ISBN 0-95117-955-0(?!). 
• John Langton, Jones, Graham: Forests and Chases of England and Wales c.1500-c.1850 (2nd edition). St John's College Research Centre, Oxford 2008, ISBN 978-0-9544975-4-5. 
• Kim Leslie, Short, Brian: An Historical Atlas of Sussex. Phillimore & Co Ltd, Chichester 1999, ISBN 1-86077-112-2. 
• Ivan D. Margary: Roman Ways in the Weald. Phoenix House, 1965, ISBN 0-460-07742-2. 
• Christopher Milne: The Enchanted Places. Methuen, London 1974, ISBN 0-413-54540-7. 
• Money, J.H. (1978). Aspects of the Iron Age in the Weald. In Drewett (1978), pp. 38–40.
• Money, J.H. & Streeten, A.D.F. (date unknown). Excavations in the Iron Age Hill Fort and Roman-British Iron-working Settlement at Garden Hill, Hartfield, East Sussex (1968–1978). Sussex Archaeological Collections, 16-26.
• Roger Penn: Portrait of Ashdown Forest. Robert Hale, London 1984, ISBN 0-7090-1219-5. 
• Oliver Rackham: The Illustrated History of the Countryside. Orion Publishing Group, London 1997, ISBN 1-85799-953-3. 
• Brian Short: The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 1876-1882: Environmental Politics and Custom. Sussex Record Society, Lewes 1997, ISBN 978-0854450416(?!). 
• Straker, Ernest (1940). Ashdown Forest and Its Inclosures. Sussex Archaeological Society, 121-135.
• Tebbutt, C.F. (1982) A Middle-Saxon Iron Smelting Furnace Site at Millbrook, Ashdown Forest, Sussex. Sussex Archaeological Collections, 120, 19-35.
• Turner, Edward (1862). Ashdown Forest, or as it was sometimes called, Lancaster Great Park. Sussex Archaeological Society, 36-64.
• Barbara Willard: The Forest - Ashdown in East Sussex. Sweethaws Press, 1989, ISBN 0-9511795-4-3. 
• F.W.M. Vera: Grazing Ecology and Forest History. CABI Publishing, Wallingford 2000, ISBN 978-0851994423(?!). 

External links

• Ashdown Forest website
• Videos about Ashdown Forest, its history and management
• Historical documents relating to Ashdown Forest.