FORESTRY 



centuries by lawless characters, such as smugglers and horse stealers. It is said that a horn was kept 

 in the neighbourhood by whose sound aid might be summoned to withstand or capture such evil- 

 doers. In after and more law-abiding times this relic of the past has gone the way of most obsolete 

 implements ; but the late Mr. Scawen Blunt, of Crabbet Park, is said to have seen it. 15s 



In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this forest-land of Worth, pierced by the main 

 road between London and Brighton, came into favour as a residential neighbourhood, and was cut 

 up into various estates, and in 1828 a private Act of Parliament was obtained for the inclosure of 

 waste that is forest-lands at Keymer, Balcombe, and Worth. 156 There are no deer parks : some of 

 the various estates into which it is now divided possess, however, park-like lands, such as Worth 

 Park, Crabbet Park, Tilgate Manor, Worth Lodge, Huntsland, Copthorne, &c. 



Under such arrangements this ancient forest-land is likely to remain, for its soil is too poor to 

 tempt agricultural experiment. There is not even so much great timber as in most of the other 

 Sussex forests, what there is being largely birch, and there is considerable heath-land, beautiful 

 though barren, as at Copthorne Common, Old House Warren, and High Beeches Warren. So 

 waste and woodland is all the northern stretch of Sussex, and so insensibly we pass eastwards from 

 St. Leonard's Forest to that of Worth, and thence to Ashdown, that the Copthorne part of Worth 

 Forest is sometimes described under dissertations on Ashdown. 157 



ASHDOWN FOREST is the most important of those portions of the great woodland of Andredes- 

 wald which were formed, more or less artificially, when Sussex was divided into rapes, and this 

 importance is derived from its size, its connexion with kings and queens, and its association with the 

 iron industry and the timber supply of the country, from a remote antiquity until the near past. 

 Extending over about 18,000 acres, it occupied the parishes of Maresfield, Fletching, East Grinstead, 

 Hartfield, Buxted, and Withyham, and is still the largest tract of forest-land remaining in Sussex. The 

 origin and meaning of the name are unknown, and though it would appear to have relation to the 

 ash tree, and a presumed prevalence of it in this forest, as a matter of fact the ash is, and probably 

 always was, a quite uncommon tree in the district. The late Rev. Edward Turner, who lived and 

 moved and wrote about this forest-land during many years, declared that all the remains of such 

 ancient trees as he had seen recovered from their subterranean or subpaludal places, wherein they had 

 lain buried for ages, were either oak or fir ; trees of great magnitude withal. There is little wood- 

 land of any great extent or denseness, such as is usually associated with the word 'forest,' existing 

 nowadays ; and it is highly probable that this particular expanse of forest-land always possessed 

 more open though wild country, and less thickly-timbered tracts at least in the portion called the 

 Forest Ridge than the more westerly parts of the ancient Anderida Silva. 



This is quite what one might expect, since, speaking generally, although Ashdown Forest in 

 parts possesses heavy clays whereon the oak flourishes, as well as localities of loam sufficiently stiff to 

 support great timber, yet a large proportion consists of green sands and gravels. 



As the aspect of a district is affected by its geology, so is its history ; and the same sandstone 

 formation that gives its picturesque and uncultivated beauty to Ashdown Forest, also contained in 

 its iron-ore-bearing strata the essential element of that industry which is so interwoven with the 

 history of Sussex, and its woodlands and forests. 



Ashdown Forest finds no mention in Domesday, either by its own name or that of any of its 

 constituent parks ; but there are the usual entries about the woods of manors all originally por- 

 tions of the forest-land and the swine that fed therein. From these we find that the lords received 

 from such woods as are mentioned 719 hogs ; so that we may number the pigs pannaged in those 

 woodlands, parts of Ashdown Forest, of which Domesday takes note, at more than 7,000. The forest 

 which we now call Ashdown, lying in the north of the rape, and extending into only six parishes, 

 in the days when it was called Pevensey Forest covered also much of the south, reaching as near to 

 Pevensey as to justify its name. This is shown, among other things, by the fact that Earl Robert 

 granted to the religious house of Wilmington herbage, pannage, and wood for fuel and repairs from 

 his forest of Pevensey, while the confirmations of these gifts by his son William particularize the 

 places as the woods in Waldron, Hoathly, Hellingly, and Laughton, 158 most of which places lie 

 quite in the southern part of the rape. 



The early history of this forest is in the main a record of donations of forest-lands and forest- 

 rights to various religious houses of the neighbourhood. The grant to Wilmington Priory by Earl 

 Robert, and its confirmation by his son William, has been already referred to. The succeeding 

 lords of the forest, the De Aquilas, continued to befriend the same monastery ; and Gilbert, third 

 of the name, in 1229 founded the priory of Michelham, seated beside the little River Cuckmere, 

 in the woodlands of ' the Dicker,' a tract of land in the south of Waldron Woods. By his charter 

 of endowment Gilbert de Aquila gave to this convent, among other things, his park of ' Peverse,' 

 an inclosure in the forest, together with pasture for sixty cattle in the Dicker, the Broyle of 



IM Suss. Arch. Coll. xiv, 63. w Ibid. xvi. 



157 Cf. Suss. Arch. Coll. xiv, 62, 63. 1M Dugdale, Mon. vi, 1091. 



2 313 4 



