Episodic struggles

Ashdown Forest had been technically created by the building of an enclosing pale some 23 miles around by c.1270 to retain deer for hunting and venison. It was never a true forest in the sense that no draconian forest laws were ever applied. But significantly, when created it overlaid a ‘regional intercommon’ used for grazing cattle, for collecting subsistence materials and as an area of pannage for swine driven up from coastal manors to feed on the acorns and beech mast.Footnote ⁶ A body of commoners had developed with inter-generational customary usage and so the imposition of this new enclosed and reserved space gave rise to both overt and covert conflict.Footnote ⁷

There had also been centuries of waste-edge piecemeal ‘nibbling’ around the edges of this common, together with occasional ideas of more coordinated enclosure, such as that of the 1650s’ Parliamentary Surveyors, although their schemes were cut short by the Restoration. Instead, any extension of older properties or new enclosures was held to be an attack upon common rights, frequently leading to the destruction of new boundaries or crops.

A compromise agreement was reached in 1693 which delineated private and communal space within the medieval pale, leading to a complex landscape of both small and large enclosures separated by areas given over for common rights (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The Ashdown Forest award Map 1693.

This is a copy made c.1773. Source unknown but the original map, too dark to reproduce, is at TNA, MPC 1/74.

These spatial arrangements essentially remained in place by the later nineteenth century. Unlike some other areas of common land, since the 1650s there had been no further concerted moves to convert the Forest into farmland: it was in an area of poor soils and exposed higher and accidented topography on the central ridge of the Weald. Nor was there a call for the release of this land for urban expansion or the railway. The growth of East Grinstead, Crowborough, and Uckfield, all on the periphery of the Forest, had taken little by the 1880s and railway lines from the 1840s onwards ran roughly north-south from London to the coast on either side of the Forest.

The proto-regulation of Ashdown

The Forest had been administered, with varying degrees of success and enthusiasm through the old manorial courts, primarily of Duddleswell and also Maresfield, which had attempted to regulate the taking of materials, whether vegetation or stone, to control squatting and stinting arrangements. But manorial enforcement was difficult and by the nineteenth century attempts to find compromises between the rights and customs on all sides continued. A meeting of commoners in 1830, for example, to regulate common rights had quickly failed, and what appeared to be a grab for the Forest’s resources, with resulting deterioration, continued apace.

But by the 1870s those who stoutly defended their common rights were now to face a new and highly litigious individual in the shape of Reginald Windsor Sackville, Seventh Earl De la Warr (1817–96), living at Buckhurst on the north-eastern edge of Ashdown. He had inherited the property rights in the Manor of Duddleswell, including the common areas of Ashdown Forest, in 1873 and quickly began to intensify legal action against the commoners, rich and poor, and in particular over their rights to collect litter, that is bracken, heather, rough grasses, gorse, and turf. His first course of action by June 1876 was against Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson at Searles in Fletching. The mansion at Searles had been built from 1870 using large amounts of local stone from the Forest, reportedly as much as 574 wagonloads that year and more than 150 in subsequent years. The action was to prohibit Wilson from taking stone, turf for lawns, and holly from the Forest and was settled by agreement out of court. The earl also proceeded against Alexander Nesbitt at Oldlands Hall, who we shall meet later, for taking gravel.

The extent to which there was any informal body seeking to protect the Forest in the years immediately leading up to the award has not been previously explored. Some very wealthy local residents were now concerned that the common was being unduly exploited: many had properties enjoying common rights and many had tenant farmers and cottage properties affected by any potential threat to these rights by over-exploitation. The most significant wealthy grouping was the self-styled Committee of the Conservators of Ashdown Forest, also referred to as the Association for the Preservation of Forest Rights, first recorded as meeting at the Dorset Arms in Hartfield on 7 August 1875.Footnote ⁸ But as with other commons defence committees elsewhere at this time, they enjoyed no legal heft. It is unclear exactly who attended and took notes at that first meeting but only Alexander Nesbitt and Bernard Hale were recorded as present, but with the former also acting as proxy for Lady Shelley from Maresfield Park. William Augustus Raper, a Battle solicitor, had become involved with a case of trespass to cut litter on the Forest soon after arriving in Sussex, and he now also joined Nesbitt and Hale. He promptly suggested that the new earl might join the Association. But although moral approval was given, no financial support was forthcoming.

The scholarly Alexander Nesbitt (1817–1886), from a family of wealthy merchants and bankers, arrived at Oldlands, purchased from his acquaintance the poet Coventry Patmore, in 1869. There were 11 tenanted farms with entitlement to 285 acres of common by the 1880s. His new Oldlands Hall, built by 1870, was designed by Matthew Digby Wyatt, with sweeping views of the distant South Downs and a 30-acre park, complete with imitation Highland glen.Footnote ⁹ Nesbitt, then a deputy lieutenant of Sussex, died at Oldlands in June 1886.

Bernard Hale (1824–89), a leading commoner as a Duddleswell copyholder, a barrister in the Middle Temple, a deputy lieutenant of Sussex and Chairman of the East Grinstead Bench and Board of Guardians, had also taken large loads of peat from the Forest. His home at Holly Hill had about 220 acres of farmland and a substantial park. In 1865, he had been a trustee for Mary, Dowager Countess of Amherst, whose will was to split the Sackville family. Hale, as a trustee, was left £500 in her will. It can be appreciated therefore that he had already encountered Reginald who was a contender in the will.Footnote ¹⁰

Hale had been the recipient of warning letters over matters of litter taking, receiving, for example, a letter on 14 December 1869 from Reginald’s predecessor:

Following the new earl’s arrival, by December 1873, strongly worded letters were being exchanged between his solicitor, Husey-Hunt, and Hale.Footnote ¹²

The first actions of this self-appointed Committee of the Conservators of Ashdown Forest on 7 August 1875 were to circulate warnings against trespass on the Forest and to warn Daniel Heasman and Alfred Chapman against turning their animals out onto the Forest – presumably because they were not commoners. Heasman was an inveterate offender: in March 1868, George Edwards the reeve had discovered six men cutting and tying up oak and beech underwood, another three with handbills but who were not actually cutting at the time, and Abraham Card ‘a woodbuyer, etc.’ loading the wood onto his wagon. On being cautioned to stop, ‘they laughed and went on cutting’. Police then arrived and the men were handcuffed and led away. Daniel Heasman was imprisoned for 21 days, and the others were fined. But all ten men then signed a paper promising not to cut any more wood:

The magistrates thereupon remitted their fines, overlooked previous poaching offences, and reduced Heasman’s prison sentence to ten days.

At the next recorded meeting on 6 October 1875, the committee requested George Edwards, the Duddleswell reeve, presumably with the earl’s permission, to throw out six ‘glaring’ encroachments, and this was pursued during the next few months. But they also considered the statement from De la Warr’s solicitors that ‘denied the right of commoners to cut litter’ but only to take it by bite of mouth by cattle, and Hale was to take counsel’s opinion on this and other matters. At the same time, they agreed to prosecute the next case of turf cutting which arose. So trespassing, underwood cutting, encroachments and turf cutting by non-commoners were to be prevented but they believed that the right of commoners to cut litter should be upheld, despite any resulting difficulties in dealings with the earl.

By June 1876, the committee now heard of the earl’s proceedings against Nesbitt for taking gravel, and against Maryon-Wilson for taking stone, turf and hollies. And in agreeing to assist Wilson against the earl by paying half his costs, the members now aligned themselves squarely with the wealthier commoners such as Wilson, while still prosecuting those poorer inhabitants without common rights. In this, they agreed to back the earl should he take criminal proceedings against non-commoners. They were now trying to interest Lord Sheffield from Sheffield Park to join the Association but at the same time Thomas Charles Thompson (1821–1892), a wealthy lawyer and Liberal MP for Durham City from 1880 to 1885, who had purchased Ashdown Park in 1867, was to be warned against his extensive paring of turf. At the Park, he had built a school and a church. Complex fissures were now clearly running through the ranks of the wealthy around the Forest.

By September 1877, the small Committee met, with Hale in the chair, to be joined by Henry Freshfield, a member of the local bench with Hale. Freshfield was a solicitor and senior partner formerly living in Hampstead where he had been active in the preservation of Hampstead Heath. But in 1874 he had moved to Kidbrooke Park (including the game preserve of Hindleap Warren) and at the time of his purchase the sale catalogue contained the following rather uncertain phrase:

The ‘probable event of an enclosure’ was unsettling and added to many local suspicions about the earl’s motives.

Earl De la Warr now turned his attention fully to the commoners, with ‘more zeal than discretion’.Footnote ¹⁵ In July, Husey-Hunt had written to Bernard Hale and other leading commoners to alert them to forthcoming legal actions against what the earl saw as unlawful acts. Not only Hale but also others such as Elphinstone Barchard at Duddleswell, Dr Wallis at Hartfield, and the barrister Robert Melville from Hartfield Grove all expressed their anger. Nevertheless, he proceeded to initiate a case against Hale when in October 1877 one of his workmen, John Miles, continued to cut litter in defiance of William Pilbeam, one of the earl’s keepers.

The result was the Ashdown Forest case which stretched intermittently from 1877 until 1882. By July 1878, the complex case, ‘enormously full of matter’, had been transferred from the Common Pleas Division of the High Court to the Chancery Division. Again, the earl maintained that commoners were not entitled to cut litter and this thereby undercut attempts by the committee to protect commoners’ rights against the activities of non-commoners. Nevertheless, by May 1879 the committee still persisted in asking De la Warr to join them in throwing out the encroachments which now seemed to be showing an alarming increase. They were joined for that May meeting by the JP Capt. William Noble of Forest Lodge, Nutley. By December Nesbitt, Hale and Freshfield were seeking financial support from Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson and Lady Shelley. They had also received a letter from Robert Melville, Hale’s near neighbour and a witness in the case, relating to the barristers and offering to pay Webster QC’s fees.Footnote ¹⁶ Nevertheless, in June 1880, based on presiding Vice-chancellor Bacon’s close reading of the 1693 award, the earl was initially victorious.

The Association met again in December 1880 at Kidbrooke Park. Raper, incensed by the court’s decision, laid on the table a report he had drawn up to be sent to all commoners to support an appeal and suggesting that they might contribute to the costs according to their acreages entitled to common, since the costs were expected to be high. This was agreed by all present. The appeal was duly lodged in February 1881 and was successful. This rested, not on the basis of the 1693 Decree, but under the terms of the 1832 Prescription Act which allowed for Hale having proved that he, and previous residents of his property, had taken litter for the use of his farm as of right, not by way of concession, over a period of at least 60 years. The work of Raper in collecting a huge body of evidence from elderly Forest residents was invaluable, and some had actually been called to give evidence at the 1880 trial.Footnote ¹⁷

To protect the rights of all commoners other than Hale, a cross-action was undertaken by Hale, Melville, and Maryon-Wilson, with Raper and Webster acting for the commoners.Footnote ¹⁸ They initially sought an injunction restraining the Earl from enclosing any part of the Forest, from interfering with their common pasture rights by encouraging stone quarries and gravel pits, or by the growth of firs and larches, and from the settlement of squatters on the Forest to create a labour force. By March 1881, a settlement was made by consent, finally establishing the right to cut litter by all those entitled to rights of common under the 1693 decree. The terms of the above injunction do provide clues to what the commoners feared De la Warr was attempting to do. Certainly, Lord Eversley saw in retrospect that if the appeal had gone De la Warr’s way ‘there can be little doubt that ultimately he would have been able to compel the commoners to submit to inclosure’.Footnote ¹⁹

The precise reasons for the earl’s actions have never been fully established. There were suspicions that he wanted to plant fir trees for profit; he was buying up small tenancies as they fell in; was he concerned about the loss of cover for game birds? Or, more kindly, was there a genuine concern on his part for what had become something of a robber economy as more vegetation was stripped, pathways eroded, stone taken off? Certainly, and as can be seen from early photos, the Forest was in a neglected condition. During the Wilson lawsuit, it was claimed that the timber had almost entirely disappeared, including the birch, willow, and alder that were permitted as estovers to commoners; that large tracts of the surface had been stripped of turf; the heath had been cut for fuel and bracken for littering down cattle yards; little pasture was to be found, and the old marl pits were overgrown and disused. Furthermore ‘a very rough class of people have taken up their abode upon the forest and built hovels and enclosed small patches of the ground and see the forest as their own – grazing their cattle and cutting and selling the turf heath ferns furze and stone etc.’Footnote ²⁰

Nevertheless, feelings had run high against the earl. The case attracted widespread attention, some decrying his bullying poorer commoners with his ‘feudal bluster’. But the CPS was actually unpopular with De la Warr’s circle of visitors, and there were certainly many local sympathisers with his actions, particularly during the case itself. A day was set aside after the verdict to argue about the costs of this expensive litigation, although these discussions dragged on for some time. The commoners eventually paid £6,194 11s 7d, nearly £1 per acre for the 6,400 acres of common land on the Forest. Earl De la Warr paid far less.Footnote ²¹

The earl had previously resisted what he saw as a loss of his influence and mineral rights over the Forest but once the appeal and cross-action went against him he dropped his opposition to a future regulation, although still refusing to associate himself with the application.

The committee, essentially a proto-conservation board, had achieved its primary objective. The main actors had been substantial men living on the fringes of the Forest, ably assisted by Raper, but Ashdown’s place-specific customs were to provide an ongoing arena of conflict.

The arrival of a conservation board

By early 1882, the vexing question of the attribution of costs was finally settled and now work continued to formulate an award to regulate the Forest. The Committee of the Commoners’ Association now first obtained a Provisional Order for the Regulation of the Forest under the Commons Act 1876, and the Award was finally confirmed, unamended, on 16 July 1885.Footnote ²²

The schedule attached to the 1885 Act offers further information. The proceedings under the 1876 Act were followed closely according to proposals for ‘regulation’ rather than ‘inclosure’ of the common. Thus, the Land Commissioners had to be satisfied that those making the application represented at least one-third of the value of interests in the Forest, and once this had been established, ordered a local enquiry to be held by an Assistant Land Commissioner. Public meetings were duly held at the Nutley Inn on the 19 and 20 November 1883 to hear evidence and opinions about the ways forward, and the Assistant Land Commissioner also inspected the Forest. One ‘ratepayer’ of East Grinstead told him that Ashdown should be cultivated ‘as a great blessing in the opinion of many’. However, the Assistant Commissioner responded that the general desire was now to keep commons as open spaces ‘to the benefit of the neighbourhood’ in the words of the 1876 Act, especially near large centres of population and that too much had been enclosed 40 years ago. Here was the significant new approach: henceforth commons were to be protected, not enclosed for productive purposes, and moreover, under the Act they were to be ‘regulated’.

The outcome was a series of ‘improvements’ to be effected, as set out in the 1876 Act, guided by bylaws ‘for the prevention of or protection from nuisances or for keeping order on the common’. These included protecting the rights of the commoners; protection from encroachments and trespasses and its ‘preservation in its natural condition’; prevention of turf cutting and damaging the forest surface; regulation of litter cutting by authorised persons; and the appointment of conservators. There was to be free public access to eight fir clumps; for cricket and other games at Nutley and three other locations around the Forest, in accordance with provisions in the 1876 Act for access to recreation grounds, sites of interest, and the enjoyment of the scenery (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The view from Nutley on the Forest edge, from an early 20^th-century postcard: small enclosures and scattered cottages.

Now action could be implemented under statutory powers, which might be expressed in either a progressive or reactionary way. Again under the terms of the 1876 Act, a board of conservators was now to be established. Their task was set out by Rev. George Maryon Maryon-Wilson, a later longstanding chairman of the conservators, in a letter to the CPS in 1919:

So the land of Ashdown was now to be legally recognised as also being the landscape of Ashdown. A public function now joined private rights, and soon ‘Romantic Ashdown’ would loom large in the minds of trippers and second homeowners. Complexity was built into the situation: the conservators had to balance the rights of commoners, the well-being of the Forest resources, and the advent and impact of increasing visitors and cottage-seekers. But even more complexity was rendered by the fact that there was dual control: Earl De la Warr remained the owner of Ashdown and he consistently refused to countenance any sale or lease of the Forest.

There were three years between the settlement of the attribution of costs and the Award, and another two years before a definitive Award map was produced by Raper, dated 1 March 1887, as required by the 1876 Act, confirmed on 28 March and endorsed by the Land Commissioners on 31 March. Finally, about five weeks later, a Board was assembled (Table 1). Its first meeting, on 5 May 1887, was held at the eighteenth-century Nutley Inn (later the Shelley Arms Hotel) which was to become their normal meeting venue.Footnote ²⁴

Table 1. The Ashdown Forest Conservators at their first meeting 5 May 1887

Source: Minutes of the Board of Conservators: 1887–1897, and Ancestry.co.uk

The membership of the new conservator body initially included some of those who had been involved in the Ashdown Forest lawsuit and the Committee of the Conservators of Ashdown Forest: Hale, Freshfield, Maryon-Wilson, and Noble. There were 12 members, plus the Lord of the Manor through his agents Husey-Hunt and later E.A. Nicholson. Large landowners were also on the board, such as the Earl of Sheffield, or as in the case of Lady Louisa Shelley, through her agent, Mark Sandford. This elite group was joined by the Rector of Maresfield, Rev. John Banks Meek Butler, whose inclusion indicated some allegiance to the traditional legitimacy accorded to the clergy. A certain status was also accorded to Albert Turner, the Nutley merchant and local employer, and the publican Joseph Wallis. Joseph Ridley and William Carr came from the ranks of the smaller farmers around Ashdown. The members were elected by the commoners on the basis of one acre/one vote, thereby prioritising the wishes of those with larger holdings, and giving rise to a longstanding grievance on the part of the smaller foresters.Footnote ²⁵ Nesbitt had died in the previous June, Melville moved away following the conclusion of the case, and Hale was to die two years later.

Four members, chosen by lot, would retire in the January at the end of each of three years, but would be eligible to stand for re-election, which in practice they generally did, and members might retain their place for many years. The conservators themselves were unpaid and occasionally missed meetings because of business commitments or summer sojourns. William Augustus Raper was appointed clerk, interestingly being nominated by Earl De la Warr, his old legal adversary.

This was a committee primarily consisting of wealthy males or their representatives. Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson was a member between 1887 and 1892, later to be followed by George Maryon Maryon-Wilson (1860–1941), a member between 1897 and 1929 and board chairman from 1900 to 1929.Footnote ²⁶ The Earl of Sheffield was a member from 1887 until 1903 and the leading Catholic layman James Fitzalan Hope (1870–1949), grandson of the fourteenth Duke of Norfolk, was a member from 1892 to1903. Hope was Conservative MP for Sheffield Brightside 1900–1906 and Sheffield Central 1908–1929, serving under Asquith and in Lloyd George’s wartime cabinet. In 1932, he was elevated as Baron Rankeillour of Buxted. He had a strong regard for his grandmother’s Ashdown home, Heron’s Ghyll, and was buried there.Footnote ²⁷

Until his death in 1903, Guy Hardy, Maryon-Wilson’s brother-in-law, also sat as a conservator. And in 1905 they were briefly joined by the Rt Hon Thomas Baron Brassey (1836–1918), the first Earl Brassey from 1911, former governor of Victoria and an in-law of the De la Warrs. He had Chelwood (or Chapelwood) Manor designed in 1904 but resigned in late 1906 citing difficulties of attending the Board meetings.Footnote ²⁸

To finance the Forest management, rates at 6d per acre were to be levied on those deemed to be benefitting from the regulation and any improvements, together with income from the sale of any outlying or small areas of Forest, not exceeding one-fortieth part of the whole, as indicated in the 1876 Act. In 1889, Raper calculated that the rate as set out in the 1876 Act, set at the highest amount permissible under the Act, and levied every 15 months, would yield about £250. The rate was highly unpopular, being seen by many as a tax on ancient commoning rights. There was also a cap, so that the larger commoners were not charged overmuch. Refusal to pay could incur legal action: one commoner whose rate had gone unpaid on two occasions had his pony cart impounded at Maresfield. In August 1888, Raper showed a schedule of those 66 individuals and their properties who were deemed at that time to have common rights. They ranged from Lady Shelley at Maresfield Park with 1,706 acres down to 19 who had 5 acres or less. It was also decided that others could purchase licences to cut litter, brakes, or peat for their own use but not for sale.

Alongside the board meetings, there was an annual meeting of the commoners each December, although this was rarely well attended except by the board members themselves and might only last for 30 minutes, primarily being concerned with the election of conservators for the following year. It became normal for the board members to reassemble for a board meeting directly afterwards.

The first board meeting focused largely on the formulation of bylaws. There were 23, which were submitted to the Land Commissioners for onward approval by the office of the Home Secretary. These incorporated many of the controls which had been exercised historically by the Duddleswell manorial court or by the short-lived Committee of the Conservators of Ashdown Forest. The conservators reserved to themselves the power to control numbers of authorised grazing animals, an important element in most such local Acts, with any transgressor liable to a fine of 40s. Legal action to recover the fine could thereafter be instigated. The conservators also forbade unauthorised enclosures and sought to prevent ‘nuisances’ which touched on what they saw as public disorder, such as vagrancy and camping; the taking of birds and game; lighting fires; turning out unauthorised animals; the taking of turf, peat etc, gravel and stone; damaging gorse, furze, broom, brakes, fern, heather, rushes, grass, litter or herbage; cutting trees and underwood etc; dumping timber, manure and refuse. But the bylaws went further in prohibiting unlawful assemblage, fighting and obscene language and using firearms. These initial bylaws were to be posted on authorised boards around the Forest, which themselves were not to be defaced.

To enforce these bylaws a ranger, H.E.T. Hickmott, then Highways Surveyor for Maresfield parish, was appointed from October 1887. But the post proved to be extremely unpopular locally. An ex-policeman or retired non-commissioned army officer was sought but there were eight different appointments tried before 1911 when Herbert Kirby took up the post and stayed until 1948 when he became manor reeve for the Buckhurst estate. When finances permitted, a second ranger was sometimes appointed. This policing role might involve prosecution of an offender by Raper, who reserved the power to himself to choose not to prosecute a first offence if the person expressed regret.

A patriarchal system of judgement, quasi-legal in effect, was thereby imposed and almost always involved action against poorer members of Ashdown society: the landless labourer, travelling charcoal burners and gypsies (Figure 4). Regulations against poaching, on the other hand, would protect sporting interests.

Figure 4. Thorns in the Conservators’ sides: a gypsy family and encampment on Ashdown Forest (courtesy Nutley Historical Society).

Cooperation against conservation

In many ways, the pursuit of Forest regulation was easier than its actual implementation, an issue arising in many other commons at this time. An Ashdown Foresters’ Protection Association had been established by mid-March 1886, that is after the passing of the Act which had its third reading in July 1885 but before the conservation board had met for its first meeting in May 1887.Footnote ²⁹

Nearly all the committee members were initially drawn from the Nutley area, on the south-west edge of the Forest pale, and a web of interpersonal connections involved neighbours and relatives, such as the three Ridleys (Table 2). A strong community network clearly existed here which could be drawn upon at this time of threat to traditional practices. Agricultural labourers and small farmers comprised the majority of committee members. Timothy John Ridley alias Gurr was so named because he had been born out of wedlock to Jane Gurr in 1841, although John and Jane married in 1844.Footnote ³⁰ Joseph Walter and James Wood died before the conservators came into being.

Table 2. The first committee members of the Ashdown Foresters Protection Association

On 17 March 1886 William Stevenson, the first secretary, went with others to Uckfield town hall to ask Mr Heald to help them over their issues on Ashdown. Charles J. Heald (1844–1926) was a substantial provisions merchant in Queens Road Brighton, employing 24 men by 1881, and by then living in Hove or latterly at Hatherley Villa, Keymer. He had political ambitions at that time but his links to Ashdown are otherwise unexplained.Footnote ³¹

Heald proposed a meeting on 23 March at the Nutley Inn and about 150 were said to be present, an early indication of the strength of feeling. T.C. Thompson was also present and Charles Heald was elected president. The first matter was a case concerning turf cutting by Joseph (not the conservator) and his son Joseph Streeter Ridley who were apprehended by the police and later fined £7.5s, thought to be an excessive amount, ‘a severe and unjust sentence’. Thompson promised to get counsel’s opinion on this. A second matter concerned the proposed 6d per acre Forest rate which was felt to be disproportionate, often falling on poor families.

One other controversial element quickly arose stemming from the 1885 Act. Those whose holdings had been enclosed on the Forest since 9 December 1869, initially thought to amount to about 45 acres, were now expected to pay for them at a fair market rate. The proceeds were to be put towards administrative expenses. Whoever could establish ownership of land on the Forest before 1869 would be entitled to retain it free of charge. The occupiers were to have a right of pre-emption but it was felt that the sum requested was excessive and should not exceed the value of such holdings before improvements were made. The meeting agreed that this anxiety should be relayed to the Land Commission.

The issue was brought to the attention of Dr Roderick McDonald, an MP for the Crofters’ Party, who raised it in the House of Commons in April 1886. He asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, since the Land Commission:

He continued by pointing out that the ‘fair market rate’ being demanded was £50 per acre, thought locally to be far too high for Forest land, and also that the Land Commissioners were forbidding the cutting of peat, ‘a right unquestioned till lately and rather beneficial than otherwise to the land’. One man, he continued, was fined for cutting peat by the Uckfield Bench, with one of the magistrates sitting thereon being a Commissioner (Conservation Board member) for the Forest.

The Secretary of State, Mr Childers, replied that the Land Commissioners held that:

Records indicate that 104 people with 156 enclosures, but totalling just 33.5 acres, paid £1,018 16s 9d. They were tiny plots: 123 of them consisted of between half and three-quarters of an acre, and only four exceeded one acre. By April 1886 a meeting of the Association at Nutley school had an attendance computed at 270. By this time the names of the conservators must have been generally known, since, although their first-minute meeting was not until the following May, it was stated that ‘all those appointed were either large landowners or representatives of such’. Roderick McDonald was thanked for taking up their case in the House of Commons and in June a meeting (about 60 present) thanked him again for ‘assisting the poor unfortunate foresters’.

In August 1886 ‘many were present’ when the question of the ‘disgraceful’ valuation of the plots for forced sale was discussed. The Land Commission had now revalued the plots downwards: Frederick Burley at Fords Green had originally been given a figure of £8, it was now to be £2.12. 6d and similar reductions were reported from around the Forest. Joseph Ridley’s plot in Nutley was originally assessed at £48 for 1½ acres, now it was to be £41, although it was marshy ground and he was actually advised to offer £20. By October 1886 all the plots had been sold.Footnote ³³ Albert Turner, soon to be a conservator, had enclosed 1¼ acres and now paid £88, the same sum that one family paid for 17 separate tiny plots.

Licences would then be granted to allow them access to litter, brakes and peat and to turn out cattle numbers commensurate with those kept on their holdings over winter. But this proved to be a complex process and by 1892 it was still far from complete, complicated by several subdivisions of property as they changed hands. Soon Raper was inviting board members to inspect the properties concerned to verify whether they were indeed eligible for inclusion. A list of the properties was to be posted, informing the public that the properties would not have common rights but would enjoy the same benefits of taking brakes, litter and peat for their own use (not for resale) and turning out in the summer the same cattle numbers as could be maintained in the winter. For this privilege they would pay the same Forest rate as the commoners. The earl expressed his unease at the large numbers of additional properties involved. By May 1896 the number had reached about 140 but it continued to climb thereafter.

The Association meetings continued: later in 1886 another meeting of what was now referred to as the Ashdown Foresters Protection Association was chaired by Heald and attended by Thompson, Barchard, Corbett ‘and other shining lights of the Association’. Various topics were raised but Thompson in particular spoke about the state of the Forest. He said that a friend asked him:

In October 1886 it was stated that every possible step was being taken to get ‘thorough representation’ on the conservation board, and a later meeting that year, with 150 present, protested against the names on the conservation board ‘on account of them not being representative men and have not the confidence of those interested in the Forest’. At a meeting with the Assistant Land Commissioner at the Nutley Inn on 1 March 1887 ‘the room was overcrowded quite half of those interested could not gain entrance’. This was again to discuss board membership. Objections were raised against the name of Mr Freshfield but finally it was agreed that he could stand. Under pressure from the meeting, it was decided to allow the Association to choose two candidates whose names would be forwarded to the Land Commission. This was followed up by an Association meeting on 14 March at the Nutley Inn when an audience of about 250, with Heald in the chair, agreed to put forward six names for him to forward to the Land Commissioners together with an explanation for ‘the inconsistency shown in choosing the conservators’. Of the six, Joseph Ridley of Horney Common and Joseph Wallis, publican of the Coopers’ Arms, Crowborough were eventually chosen (Table 1).

The Association did need to be taken seriously. In April 1887 it was reported that the earl had suffered the destruction of 150 of his small fir trees. Four men were taken to court charged with ‘maliciously and feloniously cutting and breaking 150 Scotch fir trees … worth £10’. Bail had been provided by Heald. Three were the sons of copyholders and one was himself a copyholder. The men asserted their rights to estovers and claimed that there would be no grass for the commoner if the firs were allowed to grow – ‘then the whole Forest would become the Earls’. At one point it was further reported that the earl ‘feared the strong feeling amongst [the lower] classes’.Footnote ³⁴ The accused men’s solicitor Mr Gill was reported as complaining of their treatment, that it was ‘infamous’ to arrest them on a warrant which had been secured by the earl’s woodreeve. He said to the jury:

The judge directed the jury to find the men not guilty if they believed that the defendants had a bona fide belief in their right to cut trees. The jury did so believe and after 5 minutes of discussion the prisoners were discharged, being found not guilty.

Later in 1887, it was being reported that the bylaws posted on boards were being defaced: some were damaged by stones, some smeared with cow dung and at least one sawn down. Ironically Bylaw 13 said ‘No defacing of notice boards’! But by August 1891 all the boards had been defaced or destroyed.Footnote ³⁵ More serious were the increasing incidents of incendiarism. Originally a traditional process to burn off old vegetation to enable young shoots to grow for later grazings, the fires were now being seen by the conservators as a protest against their activities and the bylaws. Furthermore, some wealthy householders on the Forest feared the possibilities of arson.

On 6 June 1887 at the Nutley schoolroom about 400 Ashdown residents assembled to discuss the new bylaws. One by one they were read out and subjected to criticism. It was felt, for example, that gypsies should be allowed to encamp; that clothes poles and faggot stacks be allowed; that all kinds of cattle be allowed; that sand digging should be allowed ‘under reasonable restrictions’; that foresters as well as commoners should have rights to cut underwood; and the powers of the superintendent [ranger] should be curtailed. These amendments were to be delivered by Thompson, Slack and Prince, the latter now acting as the foresters’ solicitor. On 11 June the conservators’ second meeting was held and was faced with the first of many future encounters with the Association. A deputation, led by Thompson immediately requested some amendments to the bylaws. After careful consideration, some amendments were made which were duly agreed by the Home Secretary.Footnote ³⁶

The Surrey Gazette of 23 June 1887 reported on the 11 June meeting of the Association and its consideration of the bylaws. Thompson, ‘who was heartily received’, gave an account of the meeting with the conservators who ‘practically … claimed to be owners of this large forest’. He was now elected as treasurer, a post he held until he resigned on being appointed a magistrate in 1890, and under his supervision a membership fee was to be levied of 4s per annum. In |August 1887, it was reported that Joseph Ridley of Millbrook and Samuel Ridley of Fairwarp had cut turf. However, the bylaws were not then in force and no action could be taken under the powers allocated to the conservation board.

It was now claimed that there were as many as 183 members of the Association. Their listed occupations give an indication of class difference compared with the conservators: included were farm labourers, farmers, carpenters, publicans, well-sinkers, sweeps, brickmakers and bricklayers, squatters, sawyers, broom makers, blacksmiths, coal merchants, plumbers, shoemakers, grocers, tinkers, corn dealers and roadmen. Many worked at Thompson’s Ashdown Park. With such a membership, it could be claimed with some justification that the Conservation Board, by contrast, was unrepresentative and lacked knowledge of the real needs of the community. Raper, not long ago a patient listener to elderly residents to collect the necessary information about user rights, was now seen as a barrier to settling the local issues. At one meeting a speaker wanted to know ‘what Raper, a lawyer at Battle, knew about the men of the Forest and their wants’. Cheers followed this.Footnote ³⁷

The unequal voting power dependent on acreage was also criticised and it was felt that ‘all holders and those who have rights on the Forest as commoners should have equal voting power namely one man one vote’. Cases of unjustifiable summonses were also presented at a November 1887 meeting, such as ‘the paltry case’ brought by Mr Freshfield when a father and daughter were accused, the former of stealing ‘a piece of tree, value ½d’ and the daughter for receiving it. The case was dismissed but feelings ran high now against the board which had been in existence for just six months.

Elphinstone Barchard followed this up later with a newspaper article headed ‘Ashdown Forest – a cruel case’. This concerned William Morphew (1838–1910), a Duddleswell heather and birch broom maker, as had been his father, uncle, grandfather and indeed great-grandfather before him. He was married and had fathered 18 children of whom 12 were living but with two subject to epileptic fits and another to consumption. By 1891 his eldest daughter, Mary Ann (aged 24), a ‘general and domestic servant’, was one of those subject to epileptic fits, dying a year later, as was Harriet (aged 12, described later in 1901 terms as ‘imbecile’ and dying aged 26). There were then 10 daughters and two sons living at home. Two sons were also broom makers by this time.

Barchard reported that at some point before 7 November 1889 William had been fined 1s for cutting heather on the Forest to make brooms. The heather that he had cut had been carried off by Hudson, the reeve, and when the next morning he had called to collect it the reeve told him ‘I’ve locked it up, and will lock you up too’. Six weeks later Hudson requested the conservators to prosecute Morphew as a criminal. His family had no parish relief and they were entirely dependent on William’s income from broom making. Elizabeth, his wife, was expecting her nineteenth child in a few weeks (probably Magdelene aged 3 in 1891) but had been refused the administration of the parish doctor by the relieving officer.

At the subsequent hearing, Hudson said that he had never known heather being cut for broom making on the Forest, although the practice had been long-established and was a statement hotly disputed by Barchard. The latter attacked the conservators asking why the golf club was allowed to cut heather (and turf) but not Morphew?Footnote ³⁸ Furthermore ‘if these poor foresters are to be deprived of an honest livelihood and bread-earning, what is to become of them?’ Barchard was urged to write to Earl De la Warr about this case and the minutes of an Association committee meeting held on 19 July 1890 note that Morphew’s fine of £1.2.6d was to be paid from the Association’s funds. At the fifth annual meeting of the Association, following the above committee meeting, Morphew’s ‘shameful treatment’ was again raised by Barchard, now President.

Unfortunately, it was reported to the conservation board on 8 March 1890 that William had been found to have continued cutting heath, and that Raper was instructed to prosecute him again. On 19 April the board heard that he had again been convicted at the East Grinstead bench and fined 10s with 11s costs. Later the board also ran up against William’s relative James Morphew, also a broom or besom maker from Fords Green, Nutley, but although he came to their attention in the 1890s for having faggot stacks and equipment for broom making and cutting heath on the Forest, he seemingly escaped punishment.

In another reported case William Stevenson (1842–1910), living by Nutley brickyard, who had previously claimed customary rights on the Forest, was convicted at the Uckfield bench of having a pug mill and a pile of brickearth encroaching onto the Forest. He was fined 1s and 13s costs, or seven days imprisonment. He was returned in the 1891 census as a self-employed brickmaker, and had been described by his mother in 1864 as a good tile maker, like his father, although his time ‘was taken up with a young woman’Footnote ³⁹ He attended a meeting of the board on 7 December 1889, claiming that the mill was actually on his own land and complaining that his pig had been taken away in default of payment of the fine. The board nevertheless confirmed their decision. Locally, this was greeted with derision at the distraining of ‘Grunter’s pig’ – even becoming the subject of a doggerel poem. More seriously it was said that William’s father was dying inside the house when the pig was taken away.Footnote ⁴⁰ It was estimated that the pig was worth 2s and was sent to the Nutley Inn for sale. But no-one would buy it. Instead, the unfortunate animal was taken further afield, to the Chequers Inn in Maresfield, and nothing more was heard of it.

It can be imagined that such cases as those of Morphew and Stevenson did nothing to reconcile the Foresters and conservators. The Association meeting in July 1890 was vociferous. Barchard’s presidential address might call for ‘defence and not defiance’ but harsh words were still plentiful. He referred to Capt. Noble’s men cutting turf and Mr Freshfield’s men cutting green turf and returned to a critique of the golf club once again which ‘had no business on the Forest’ and had cut litter without the right to do so. In fact Capt. Noble’s house, Forest Lodge in Maresfield, had burned down in February 1888 and a strip of lawn had been relaid without his knowledge or consent. When told of the issue he had ordered the turf to be replaced.Footnote ⁴¹

Local and national politics

The Rector of Maresfield, the conservator Rev. Butler, criticised those ‘radical politicians’ striving to set ‘the masses against the classes’, and had accused the Association of introducing politics. Barchard claimed, however, that this was about local politics.

Nevertheless, the Association’s committee did actually also come to include more wealthy and politicised men who joined the coalition. The ‘thick ties’ of personal friendships and family members were now to be supplemented by ‘weak ties’ whereby articulate men also joined the Association.Footnote ⁴² Thompson, Heald, Barchard and Corbett were all Liberal politicians, would be politicians or otherwise sympathisers, creating a strong Liberal presence within the Association. The initial president, Charles J. Heald unsuccessfully tried for the seat of East Grinstead in 1885 and again in 1886. We might remember that the 1880s was certainly marked by a radical political interest in agrarianism within mainstream Liberal ranks as well as in the Fabians and others. The 1873 Return of Owners of Land had highlighted the unequal distribution of property in Sussex, as elsewhere, together with the perception of a deteriorating agricultural prosperity and rural depopulation which gathered even more strength in the years leading to the First World War.

Thompson called for the cultivation of Ashdown, advocating at one point that Ashdown ‘should be parcelled out in small pieces to be cultivated’, with more cottages to be built near schools and residents’ work, since ‘it was a disgrace that the forest should remain in its present shameful condition’.Footnote ⁴³ This to loud applause from an Association audience. To some extent, his views were echoed in June 1889 at a hearing of the Select Committee on Smallholdings when the members heard from the Rev. Ebenezer Littleton, a Baptist minister from Withyham. He painted a picture to a somewhat sceptical committee, of a relatively prosperous body of smallholders around Ashdown, paying higher rents for improved lands of up to 4 acres, and with forest rights and working off the holding as well. There was a pent-up demand for more smallholdings, he felt, and more might be done if the conservators would release more land for smallholdings. The earl, he felt, would certainly be prepared to ‘make it into smallholdings’ and this would be facilitated by ’rich persons in the neighbourhood’. The people, he thought, ‘want to get onto the land, to break it up, and cultivate it’. However, committee member Jesse Collins pointed out that under the 1885 Order there could legally be no further enclosures – a fact that Littleton admitted he did not know.Footnote ⁴⁴

Elphinstone Barchard (1827–1893) was also a Liberal, who later became Association chairman from about 1890. His wealthy merchant father had rebuilt Horsted Place (Little Horsted), and Elphinstone, called to the bar in 1853, was living at Duddleswell as a customary tenant. He was among those to whom a letter had been sent warning against cutting litter prior to the Ashdown Forest Case. In later years he became a prolific writer of letters concerning Ashdown to local newspapers, explicitly stating in one report that the conservators supported the rich while the Association supported the poor. The west window at Fairwarp church is dedicated to his memory. He helped to establish the church but also a local pub, ‘The Fox’, as a temperance coffee-tavern.Footnote ⁴⁵

Charles Corbett (1853–1935) had moved to Woodgate, Danehill in the early 1880s. He was an unsuccessful candidate for East Grinstead in 1895 and 1900, but won the seat with a slim majority in the Liberal landslide of 1906, before losing it again in 1910. Jesse Ridley, son of the conservator Joseph, and who became clerk to the Association, toured the area in a donkey cart canvassing for Corbett in the 1906 general election (Figure 5).Footnote ⁴⁶ Corbett owned Forest Farm, near Chelwood Gate, whose tenant by the 1890s was Sylvanus Ridley, emphasising further the link with the Ridleys. Common rights for the farm were eventually granted in February 1894. Corbett was a passionate campaigner for female suffrage, as was his formidable wife Marie Gray who also campaigned for women’s rights and the Liberals in East Grinstead High Street, once enduring egg throwing and stoning in 1913.Footnote ⁴⁷ Charles in fact also later became an Ashdown Conservator 1898–1905, before resigning because of his political duties.

Figure 5. Election poster 1906.

Source: Danehill Historical Society, ‘Woodgate (now Cumnor House School)’ (July 2010), p.13. The school opened in 1949.

Meetings of the Association were held in the Nutley schoolroom, emphasising the location of its founding members. Interestingly, on Saturday 23 January 1889 the Association was refused use of the schoolroom and had to decamp to the Nutley Inn at Fords Green. The reason given by the school managers was that use of the schoolroom had already been granted to a meeting of the relatively newly formed Primrose League, dedicated to the diffusion of Conservative values. At the reorganised Nutley Inn meeting Thompson stated that he wanted the 1885 Ashdown Forest Act repealed. It was passed while he was an MP but he was absent at that time. He would have tried to block the bill otherwise and felt that ‘the Act had simply been smuggled through Parliament.’

The power and limitations of protest

The situation was threatening to be unworkable in less than three years after the Act was passed. The conservators were now undoubtedly under pressure from many in the locality. Added to which the Association tabled 47 written questions to the conservators concerning rights of common, the 1885 Act and 60-year user rights. Barchard referred to this, saying that their 47 questions had not all been answered and that the conservators ‘met our deputation in a most unconciliatory manner’, referring to ‘the jibes and quibbles of Mr Raper’. More dubiously he also put forward the idea that if 60 years was the qualification for user, then 60 years of non-use should take away the rights of, for example, the rector of Maresfield or the vicar of Nutley.

In October 1887 Earl De la Warr agreed to grant licences to small occupiers within or adjacent to the Forest to cut litter and brakes. In 1888 a very lively Association meeting was addressed by Charles Heald who reiterated, to great applause, that the conservators had no power to prevent men on the Forest from continuing with their user rights and customary practices. The conservators would act against them but those of their own standing were never prosecuted. Faced with a growing hostility towards them, the conservators attempted to demonstrate flexibility.

Therefore, in May 1888 a notice was posted inviting those who believed they had rights to come forward. As a result, Raper was characteristically busy, now drawing up a list of those small occupiers who he believed could claim user over 60 years, which proved to be a difficult task. One difficulty was that the conservators could not draw up a definitive list of properties originally mentioned in the Decree of 1693 or the true extent of others, so could not be sure of the numbers of legitimate commoners. But in October 1889 he issued a lengthy general notice. The main point was that:

Further concessions were made in later years: licences would be granted from 1891 to cut peat by cottagers within the pale, extended in 1895 to those above the class of cottager; in 1897 small occupiers could be licenced to erect faggot and turf stacks, later extended to stacks of bricks where a house was being built.

Class, conservation and conflict

Ray Cocks asked in 1989 ‘How important was the forest to the poor of Sussex, and how much did they suffer when it was subjected to systematic late-Victorian administration?’Footnote ⁴⁸ We might begin to answer this by asking what ‘regulation’ actually meant for Ashdown? The older manorial system had by now ceased to operate in any meaningful way but it soon became clear to many that environmental and social management was seemingly to take precedence over the customary rights as seen by the less wealthy and smaller commoners and their workpeople, as well as non-commoners, who felt marginalised by the patriarchy of the new committee. And restrictions were placed on commoners too: in designated areas, they could cut brakes, except from February to July; and litter cutting was prohibited between April and September. This had the effect of ensuring workers were still available for harvesting but certainly sought to erode flexible piecework employment.

The issues arising from the superimposition of the national 1876 Act onto a complex local reality are clearly demonstrated in the case of Ashdown Forest. The interests of three internal local groups were closely involved with the Forest. But pushing hard into consideration were forces emanating from a wider external source: trippers and home-seekers wishing to enjoy the benefits of a countryside but within reach of London.

The three local interest groups consisted of first, the new conservator body from 1887; secondly, the many commoners reliant to greater or lesser extents on the forest resources, together with any workers were employed; and thirdly the ‘foresters’ who lived locally, enjoying some benefits from the common, but without necessarily having any common rights. Among the latter two groups, a feeling now sharpened, as we have seen, that their traditional, indeed moral, rights were now threatened. Keir Hardie described smallholders and such foresters in 1909:

The defence used by the commoners to win their appeal in 1882 had rested upon the issue of prescription, but their spokesmen may not have anticipated that such rights might be similarly claimed by those in the neighbourhood who technically had no common rights but who might attempt to prove customary user over 60 years. Some indeed were those who had been interviewed by Raper for the case.

And for 50 years following the 1885 Act there was ongoing unease among working families at the control exerted by the conservators. In 1937 a new Ashdown Forest Act brought in the local authorities to bolster finances and to open up the Forest to a still wider Sussex population. The distrust of the conservators’ powers continued, and indeed still continues today in some quarters. Of course, cottagers have virtually vanished and their cottages are gentrified, common rights are rarely exercised, and conservation has assumed a prime importance as far as funding allows. The shadow of the 1876 Act still hangs over Ashdown: the Janus-face of attracting and encouraging visitors whilst protecting and enhancing conservation and landscape remains as difficult today as it was in 1885.