FORESTRY THE main feature of the county of Kent is the great central mass of chalk known as the North Downs, which stretches from a point on its western boundary, a little to the north of Westerham, to the chalk cliils of Dover. This backbone of the county is broken in three places by the valleys of the Darenth, Medway and Stour; but, notwithstanding these interruptions, it forms a natural barrier through the county, dividing it into two rather unequal portions, with a slope to seaward and the estuary of the Thames on the one side, and a dip into the Weald valley on the other. The whole question of the Forest of Anderida or Andred has been exhaustively discussed and illustrated by maps by the late Mr. Furley, and particular attention given to the dis- tribution of the dens or denes.* He holds that little progress was made during the Roman occupation in bringing into cultivation the forest of Andred, owing to the density of the wood and the nature of the soil. It was in verity a forest according to the modern use of the term, for it is generally mentioned as a sylva, and did not imply a district reserved for royal game with many a great open space. This vast wood, stretching right away from the coast of Kent over the north of Sussex and through part of Surrey into Hampshire, which must have been by far the greatest wood in South Britain, if not in the whole of the [kingdom, became subsequently known as the Weald. In Saxon times, when there came about a dis- tribution of lands, those tracts not thus assigned were considered as belonging to the Crown, and Mr. Furley and others have proved that this was the case with the forest of Andred, or the Weald. Later Anglo-Saxon sovereigns granted rights over it or parts of it, chiefly to the Church ; but ' we have no evidence that it was at any time a private forest of the sovereign, or that there was ever a reservation of vert and venison in any part of it. No forest laws have come down to us.' ^ By a slow and gradual process, this gloomy forest, frequented at first only by herdmen with their svdne and cattle, became the permanent abode here and there of settlers who rid patches of the timber and brushwood, establishing themselves on the clearings that they cultivated. The denes or hollows of the Weald appear to have been specially useful as feeding places for the swine in Kent, whilst in Sussex they afforded shelter for the sheep as at Ovingdean, Rottingdean, etc' The district was in no way favourable for deer or royal game. The Weald, so far as Kent is concerned, stands out in an exceptional and remarkable position at the time of the Conquest, as is shown from the Domesday Survey ; there was a significant absence of mention of both (i) manors and (2) waste lands throughout the greater part of that district. Such parts, however, of the Weald as had not been inclosed were claimed by the Conqueror, and parcelled out as small manors among his favourites, such as Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.* Yet a very considerable proportion of the Kent Weald escapes mention in the Survey ; it was the common land of the county. The Hundreds of Barkley, Great Barn- field, Little Barnfield, Brenchley and Horsmonden, Cranbrook, Marden, and Tenterden, now in the very centre of the Weald, are not referred to in any way in the Survey. Mr. Furley also supplies a list of vills and manors situated wholly or in part within the Weald and not to be found in Domesday by name, although denes belonging to neighbouring vills had in most cases been formed. This list of forty-four includes such well-known names as Ashurst, Biddenden, Chevening, Hawkhurst, Penshurst, Sandhurst, Tonbridge, and Sevenoaks.^ This is the reason why, in a county so densely wooded in parts, as must have been the case with Kent at the time of the Survey, the number of swine that could find pannage is so very much smaller than on the manors of many other counties which were probably far less 1 Furley, Hist, of the Weald of Kent, 3 vols. (1871). ^ jj^jj ;_ 203-5. ' Lower, Hist, of Sussex, i. 5. See Furley, op. cit. vol. i. cap. 31. ^ Ibid. i. cap. 21.
