Ashdown Forest - Toponymy

Toponymy

Ashdown Forest does not seem to have existed as a distinct entity before the Norman Conquest of 1066 AD, nor is it mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. The area that was to become known as Ashdown Forest was merely an unidentified part of the Forest of Pevensel, a Norman creation within the Rape of Pevensey that had been carved out of a much larger area of woodland, the Weald. The first recorded reference to Ashdown Forest by name is in the period 1100-1130 AD, when Henry I confirmed the right of monks to use a road across the forest of "Essessdone", a right which the monks claimed to have held since the Conquest.

"Ashdown Forest" consists of words from two different languages. The first word, Ashdown, is of Anglo-Saxon origin. It is probably derived from the personal name of an individual or people called Aesca, combined with dún, Old English for hill or down, hence Aesca's dún—the hill of Aesca. It has no connection with ash trees, which have never been common given the soil conditions.

The second word, forest, is a term here used by the Normans to denote land that was subject to forest law, a harsh and much resented supplement to the common law that was designed to protect, for the king's benefit, the beasts of the chase, such as deer and wild boar, and the vegetation that provided them with food and cover. Forest law prescribed severe penalties, particularly in the 11th and 12th centuries, for those who transgressed, and for a time it governed large parts of the English countryside, including entire counties such as Surrey and Essex. However, while forest land was legally set aside by the crown for hunting and protected its sovereign right to all wild animals, commoners were still able to exercise - within strict limits - many of their traditional or customary rights, for example, to pasture their swine in the woods or collect wind-blown branches and trees. Thus, in the 13th century, the commoners of Ashdown were recorded as grazing large numbers of swine and cattle on the forest alongside the many deer that were kept for aristocratic sport and the provision of venison.

Note that forest does not have the modern meaning of "heavily wooded". Medieval hunting forests like Ashdown consisted of a mixture of heath, woodland and other habitats in which a variety of game could flourish, and where deer in particular could find both open pasture for browsing and woodland thickets for protective cover.