THE GROWING TENSIONS OVER access to Ashdown's resources did not abate with the accessions of William IV or Victoria. The power derived from Empire and a leading role in world affairs hardly masked underlying social and economic problems at the local level. This was certainly true of the burgeoning towns and cities, growing too fast for their administrations to ensure decent living conditions, but it was also true of the countryside. A gap now yawned still further between the lives of those with sufficient incomes to live comfortably in pleasant rural surroundings and those whose incomes were precarious and whose living standards seem to have shown little change for generations.

POPULATION AND SOCIETY AROUND THE FOREST IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

To offer a basic overview of population changes around Ashdown we can now turn to the decennial census, begun in 1801, and partly through the prompting of Charles Abbot (Table 8.1). Overall, Ashdown's population nearly trebled by 1911, thanks largely to urban growth at East Grinstead and later Crowborough, which became a separate parish on the edge of the Forest, taking in the western part of Rotherfield. Fluctuations in population numbers sometimes resulted from the temporary migrations of farm labourers seeking work elsewhere, as at Withyham, Rotherfield and Buxted in 1841, the latter parish also seeing a reduction because of the transfer of paupers to the new workhouse in Uckfield. Many rural parishes across England suffered from an exodus of younger people looking for work in towns and, although Ashdown does not really show this, there was something of a standstill or at least only moderate growth between 1831 and 1861. The population boom years between 1901 and 1911 were exceptional, and again largely due to the growth of East Grinstead, Crowborough and now also Forest Row.

The 1831 census abstracts also allow a more detailed demographic analysis than available for earlier periods, showing numbers of families, gender balance, numbers of dwellings and an outline of the occupational structure (Table 8.2). The table emphasises that agriculture remained key to employment, with the result that there were slightly more males in the population.