Ashdown Forest - Ashdown Forest's Common Land and Its Commoners

Ashdown Forest's Common Land and Its Commoners

The common land of Ashdown Forest, amounting to some 6,400 acres (2,600 ha), consists of specific areas of the 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. These common rights are attached to certain landholdings around the forest, not to individual people, and are passed on when properties are sold or inherited. Since 1885 the common land has been regulated and protected by a statutory Board of Conservators.

Contrary to widespread belief, a 'common' in England is not 'public land'. However, in the case of Ashdown Forest, the conservators have given the public open access to the common land, subject to compliance with bye-laws that largely aim to preserve the special character of the forest.

A right of common may be defined as:

"...a right, which one or more persons may have, to take or use some portion of that which another man's soil naturally produces..."

On Ashdown Forest the rights of common have varied over time. Those that remain today, which are subject to local byelaws and are under the control of the conservators, are:

• pasturage (or grazing rights): the right to graze sheep, cattle, goats, geese or mill horses (horses that provide power for the mill) on the Forest.

• estovers: today, understood to be the right to cut birch, willow or alder for use in the "ancestral hearth", which may only be exercised at certain times and in certain areas designated by the Conservators.

• brakes and litter: the right to cut brake (bracken) and heather and to collect litter for the principal purpose of bedding down livestock in winter on the land-holding.

Today, to a varying degree, every property possessing common rights has some or all of these rights over the registered common land of the forest.

To become a commoner a person must acquire commonable land; conversely, a person selling a commonable property ceases to be a commoner. Where a commonable property is sold off in smaller portions, the commonable rights are apportioned in accordance with the area of each portion. All commoners are obliged to pay a Forest Rate (based on the area of commonable land held) 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.

A sharp decline in commoning after the end of World War II resulted in a rapid loss of the Forest's open heathland to scrub and trees, threatening the many specialised and rare plants and animals that depend on the heathland and jeopardising the Forests's famous open landscape with its magnificent vistas, so well captured in EH Shepard's Winnie-the-Pooh illustrations. The Board of Conservators has responded by moving beyond its original administrative and regulatory functions to play a more active, interventionist role in combating the invasion of scrub and trees with the aim of restoring the heathland to a favourable condition.