page_title: Ashdown Forest
section_title: Shape and extent
hierarchical_section_title: Ashdown Forest / Shape and extent
caption_attribution_description: English: A map of Ashdown Forest, East Sussex, showing its common land and highlighting the largest of the enclosures confirmed in the 1693 decree that divided up the forest. The major enclosures are at Pippingford Park and Old Lodge (PP)&#160;; Crowborough Warren (CW); Hindleap Warren (HW); 500 Acre Wood; Prestridge Warren (PW); and Broadstone Warren (BW).
context_page_description: Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some 30 miles south of London in the county of Sussex, England. Rising to an elevation
  of 732 feet 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 as a medieval hunting forest created soon after the Norman conquest of England. By 1283 the forest was fenced in by a 23 miles pale enclosing an area of some 20 square miles. Thirty-four gates and hatches in the pale, still remembered in place names such as Chuck Hatch and Chelwood Gate, 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 and who courted Anne Boleyn at nearby Hever Castle.
  Ashdown Forest has a rich archaeological heritage.
context_section_description: Ashdown Forest is shaped, roughly speaking, like an inverted triangle, some 7 miles (11 km) from east to west and the same distance from north to south.
  The boundary of the forest can be defined in various ways, but the most important is that given by the line of the medieval pale, which goes back to its origins as a hunting forest. The pale, first referred to in a document of 1283, consisted of a ditch and bank surmounted by an oak palisade. 23 miles (37 km) in length, it enclosed an area of some 20.5 square miles (5,300 ha). The original embankment and ditch, albeit now rather degraded and overgrown, can still be discerned in places today.
  In 1693 the forest assumed its present-day shape when just over half its then 13,991 acres (5,662 ha) was assigned for private enclosure and improvement, while the remainder, about 6,400 acres (2,600 ha), was set aside as common land. Much of the latter was distributed in a rather fragmentary way around the periphery of the forest close to existing settlements and smallholdings (see map). Many present-day references to Ashdown Forest, including those made by the conservators, treat the forest as synonymous and co-terminous with this residual common land; 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 forest conservators, extends outside. The conservators have acquired other tracts in recent years as suitable opportunities have arisen, for example at Chelwood Vachery, as part of a policy to extend the amount of land that they regulate and protect within the pale. 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 2,472 hectares (9.5 sq mi).
caption: Map of Ashdown Forest, showing, in green, the distribution of its common land. The major private enclosures are shown with abbreviated blue text.
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