Chapter 11 - Ashdown in War and Peace, 1914–1945

Summary

The fighting services are bound to become serious enemies of what is left of England. Wherever they see a tract of wild, unspoiled country they naturally want it for camps … .

THE FIRST AND SECOND World Wars impacted upon Ashdown as they did elsewhere, superimposed onto all the other issues facing the Forest. The lives of many of the Forest's families were to change for ever after 1914 as sons were lost or maimed in the fighting, and the military camps spread over much of the Forest as men were readied for advancing to the Front, whether to Flanders or the beaches of Normandy. But by 1914 there was some continuity: there was still a lord of Duddleswell manor, still a Board of Conservators, still an ongoing tussle between those upholding the aesthetics of landscape and those conscious of the needs of those who lived there and worked the unrewarding soils. The interwar period too brought its own challenges, particularly to the Forest landscape at a time of growing travel, tourism and housebuilding.

POPULATION CHANGE IN THE FOREST PARISHES 1911–1951

Population continued its growth through to the middle of the twentieth century, increasing by 52 per cent through to 1951, although there was little overall pattern (Table 11.1). For most parishes the highest totals were in 1951, although that for Maresfield came in 1921 because of its wartime army camp. The population of Buxted in 1921 was similarly boosted by the military, but some other parishes, such as Fletching, Rotherfield and West Hoathly, saw little change. East Grinstead continued to grow as the largest settlement around Ashdown, helped by the early electrification of the LBSCR from 1909 such that all their lines were electric from 1938.

Subdivisions of civil parishes occurring at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries brought Forest Row, Danehill, Crowborough and Hadlow Down to join the ancient parishes around Ashdown. The two largest parishes were thereby affected: the carving of Crowborough from the old parish of Rotherfield meant that the latter's 1851 area of 14,733 acres had shrunk to 11,597 acres by 1961, and East Grinstead, losing Forest Row, shrank from 15,071 acres in 1851 to just 6,600 acres by 1961.