Shape and Extent
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 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. 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).
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