FORESTRY 



to the consumption of a quantity of young timber, particularly chestnut and ash in the coppices, 

 without any commensurate planting to replenish the supply for the future. Fortunately, as time 

 went on compensatory forces came into play to preserve the woodlands of Sussex, the county came 

 into favour for residential purposes, and with increased facilities of access, old residences were 

 re-occupied, new ones built, and the forest-lands of Ashdown and St. Leonard have become the seats 

 of numerous country houses, and the sites of prosperous villages and even embryo towns. Well- 

 wooded parks still abound, and the extensive preservation of game at least necessitates the preserva- 

 tion and planting of the ' vert ' requisite for its propagation and protection. Deer, both red and 

 fallow, still live in Sussex woodlands, even to a greater extent than in counties of more ample 

 acreage or wider wilder wastes. The most recent writer on the subject states that Sussex has more 

 inclosed land given up to deer than any other county. 49 He names Eridge Park as the largest 

 English park ; and states that Warnham Park, north-west of St. Leonard's Forest, has produced the 

 largest deer in the country, an animal, namely, of 44 stone 8 Ib. to the stone and with 36 

 points. This park also furnishes fifteen deer each season for the Warnham Stag-hunt. There are 

 at least twenty deer-parks within the county ; the number of parks of the usual description is also 

 very large, but indefinite, the application of the term being somewhat elastic nowadays. They 

 will be dealt with under their respective parishes in the topographical portion of this work. 



Arboriculture in Sussex can hardly be said to exist in any degree commensurate with favouring 

 conditions of soil, climate, and demand. Very large tracts of land are practically virgin soil, and its 

 geological nature so varied that almost any kind of tree will flourish, particularly in the western 

 division of the county, where the rainfall is more liberal, to the extent of fifteen or twenty per cent., 

 than in the eastern. Young, indeed, declared that there is ' no region of the earth where trees of all 

 kinds thrive better, particularly oak and ash. . . . Even now if a field is neglected it will become a 

 wood, principally of oak and birch, intermixed with hazel, some kinds of willow, and dogwood.' 5< 



The sixteenth century is given as the earliest date when tree-planting was practised in Britain, 51 

 but so abundant was the timber still growing in Sussex that it is doubtful whether this county was 

 the scene of much of that kind of work, though doubtless preservation as distinct from planting of 

 trees began therein at that period ; for the Act of Parliament of I543, 52 which provided for the 

 preservation, when felling wood, of twelve standard oaks, elms, ashes, or beeches on every acre, 

 applied, of course, to Sussex as well as the rest of the kingdom. 



In the next century the growing need for plantation of trees came to be more generally recog- 

 nized, and doubtless Evelyn's Sylva was not without effect, particularly in its advocacy of the culture 

 of oak for the Navy. Especially may this influence have been operative in Sussex, since the author, 

 if not native to its soil, was connected with it, at Lewes and Mailing, by education, family, and 

 residence. Another and earlier Sussex writer, who by his book of Howe to plant and graffe all 

 sortes of trees may have stimulated arboriculture in the county, was Leonard Mascall, of Plumpton. 

 He is indeed credited (on doubtful evidence) with the introduction of pippins into English orchards. 



As an actual instance of seventeenth-century arboriculture in Sussex may be quoted some items 

 from Lord Dacre's Household Account-book at Herstmonceux : as 24;. paid in November, 1644, for 

 ' planting and staking trees ' ; an equal sum later on paid to four men for ' 6 daies work for digging 

 up young trees and planting them in the Park'; ' 141. paid for digging Ground to set young syca- 

 more trees ' ; 51. 6d. to four men setting acorns, and a further payment for gathering and setting 

 sixty ' checker ' trees ' wild service tree ' and 500 quicksets. 53 Whether Sussex landowners in 

 general were as provident in arboriculture as the lord of Herstmonceux is doubtful, while it is very 

 certain that felling was continuous. In the south of the forest-land of Worth, Anthony Stapley, 

 of Hickstead, in the same year that Lord Dacre was planting timber, cut no less than 249 oaks, 

 'all of them very fine and they sold well' ; while of his underwoods he made 18,800 faggots, of 

 which he sold 13,075, at an average of 5*. per hundred. 54 Eighty years later 275 oaks were felled 

 on the same estate and sold for ^132, in addition to which there were 'sold to John Bridges 

 562 oaks to be cut this year, for ^330,' while ninety other trees were sold for ^23 2J. 55 The 

 acreage of Sussex woodland at this period was 200,000 acres. 



As time passed on, and the consumption of timber by the ship-building for the fast-growing 

 mercantile and naval fleets of Great Britain more than neutralized the saving effected by the with- 

 drawal of the iron industry to the north, apprehensions of the exhaustion of the woodlands of Sussex 

 acted as a stimulus to the plantation of hard-wood timber, particularly oak, while the numerous 

 Inclosure Acts, though most of the lands dealt with under them were made arable, afforded a great 

 deal of ground suitable for timber-growing. , 



The long struggle with Napoleon occasioned a great demand for timber for ship-building, to 

 make good the damage sustained by the naval and mercantile marine. The oaks of Sussex, being 



49 Whitaker, Descriptive List of Deer Parks, 1892. 



50 Young, Agru. of Suss. 469. " Encyel. Brit. "35 Hen. VIII. 

 5S Suit. Arch. Coll. xlviii, 113. " Ibid, xxiii, 61. " Ibid. 63. 



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