CHAPTER XXV 

 THE FORESTS OF SUSSEX 



IN early historic days, almost the whole of Sussex, together 

 with considerable parts of Kent and Surrey, formed one 

 great forest, called by the Britons Coit Andred, from its 

 vast extent. The Saxons called it Andredes-weald, which 

 was doubtless adapted from the Anderida Silva of the Roman 

 Itineraries. The Saxon Chronicle, under date 893, gives its 

 extent as 120 miles long from east to west, and thirty miles in 

 breadth. That considerable part of the county which remained 

 forest or open till much later days some, indeed, until the 

 present time was known as the Forest Ridge ; it formed the 

 elevated district of the north-eastern part of the county, and 

 stretched in a north-westerly direction along the borders of 

 Surrey. The principal sections of this are still known as the 

 forests of St. Leonard and of Ashdown. 



Young, in his Agricultural Survey, at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, said : " A great proportion of these hills is 

 nothing better than the poorest barren sand, the vegetable 

 covering consisting of ferns, heath, etc. St. Leonard's Forest 

 contains 10,000 acres of it, and Ashdown 18,000 more, besides 

 many thousand acres in various other parts of the county." 



Ashdown forest is described by Mr. Turner, in a good 

 paper contributed to the collections of the Sussex Archaeologi- 

 cal Society (vol. xiv.), as consisting of about 10,000 acres, 

 situated in the parishes of Maresfield, Fletching, East Grin- 

 stead, Hartfield, Withyham, and Buxted. It formed part of 

 the honor of Pevensey, and from 53 Henry III. was invested 

 in the Crown in perpetuity, and hence was a technical forest 

 under forest law, a position that it did not lose when it came to 

 John of Gaunt in 44 Edward III. It reverted to the Crown, with 



301 



