For several centuries Ashdown Forest was a royal hunting ground known as Lancaster Great Park, enclosed by a pale, or fence. The position of some of the various ‘gates’ and ‘hatches’ in the pale are still reflected in the names of villages and hamlets surrounding the forest, Chelwood Gate and Coleman’s Hatch among them. Nowadays the forest is still used for pleasure, albeit of a gentler nature; walking, horse riding and bird watching are among the most popular activities.

Ashdown Forest covers 14,000 acres of lowland heathland which has never been under the plough and so provides a unique habitat for many species of flora and fauna.

There are several hundred deer, mainly Roe and Fallow and including small numbers of Muntjac and Sika, living happily in the woodland areas. Nightjar and Stonechat, Skylark and Meadow Pipit, Dartford Warbler and Woodcock are among the birds which enjoy the gorse and heather habitat. Many rare species of butterfly, moth and dragonfly are also to be seen, as are adders and a small number of grass snakes.

Today’s Ashdown Forest is managed by a Board of Conservators whose main duties are to regulate and manage the forest as an amenity and a place of resort. The Conservators also guard the ‘rights of common’, protect the forest from encroachments and conserve it as a quiet and natural area of outstanding natural beauty.

One of the most famous and best loved former residents of Ashdown Forest was Winnie the Pooh, whose favourite haunts, the Hundred Acre Wood, the Six Pine Trees, the Sandy Pit where Roo played, are all still easily identifiable. There is a memorial to A.A.Milne the author and E.H.Shepard the artist at the Enchanted Place, a viewpoint near Gills Lap, which looks down towards the village of Hartfield where Pooh and his friend Christopher Robin used to live.