THE FACE OF EARLY MODERN ASHDOWN

THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD allows us a far more detailed insight into the topography of Ashdown. We learn more about the enclosures, about some of the buildings and about the pale itself.

The pale required endless attention, with repairs made by a ‘Knockpyn’ or Pallister using oak trunks. The location of oaks around the Forest was the subject of an enquiry in 1509, when concern at oak felling was indicated, and landowners were separately listed. In September 1518 comes reference to bargains made for the paling and in 1521 a warrant was issued for the ‘Forest of Ashdown to be new enclosed with Pale’, presumably replacing the wooden stakes topping the banks, although the cleft oak stakes were not always rotted but might be reused. Copyholders had complained in 1520 that timber had been cut down from their holdings by the Forest officers for repairing the pale, as well as oaks being cut for the repair of Maresfield church and the manorial pound there. In 1605 Thomas first earl of Dorset endorsed a petition from the tenants of Ashdown for a commission to himself to cut timber for repair of the pale ‘in order to preserve the game in which the King delights’, a reference to the hunting interests of James I. Timber taken for its repair was listed in 1608 but in December 1610 and again in 1613 the pale was reportedly ruinous once more. Furthermore, at this time Richard Holmes ‘loosened, pulled down and took divers pales enclosing the Forest aforesaid and burnt the same in his own house’. The fine on this occasion was 5s, suggesting that it was considered a relatively serious offence.

The 1539 survey by royal commissioners included a perambulation of the pale, from gate to gate, offering thoughts on its effectiveness as a boundary. We now learn that certain sections of the pale were ‘in great ruyne and decay’, ‘leid to the ground’, and that the deer ‘many tymes goeth out of the same in great daynger never to come home again’. Given their prodigious leaping abilities, the upkeep of both pale and ditch was certainly essential.