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Chapters: Ashdown Forest. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 42. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Ashdown Forest - Ashdown is of Anglo-Saxon origin and means Aescas hill. Forest is of Norman origin, an Old French word derived from the Latin "forestem silvam" (the "outside woods"). While the word forest has acquired the generic meaning of "an extensive area of woodland", in Norman times it denoted uncultivated land legally set aside by the Crown or by local magnates for hunting; such land was subject not to Common Law but to Forest Law, which protected both royal and aristocratic hunting privileges and commoners' rights. It follows that the designation of Ashdown by the Normans as a royal forest does not imply that it was heavily wooded. In fact, royal forests in England in medieval times, of which there were many, typically consisted of a mixture of heath, woodland and other habitats in which a variety of game could flourish and Ashdown Forest, notwithstanding its location in the middle of the heavily wooded High Weald, may have been no exception. Ashdown Forest is very roughly shaped like an inverted triangle, some seven miles from east to west and the same distance from north to south, with an extent of about 14,000 acres (21.9 sq mi). The Forest can be defined in various ways. The most important is that given by the line of the medieval pale, which goes back to the Forest's origins as a Norman deer-hunting park. This 23 miles (37 km) long ditch and bank topped with an oak palisade enclosed an area of some 20.5 square miles (5,300 ha). First referred to in 1283, the pale can still be discerned today. During the Protectorate, in 1658, a comprehensive Parliamentary Survey found Lancaster Great Park (the name given to Ashdown Forest from 1372 to 1672 after it was granted to John of G...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=152959