Bronze Age Barrows and Balleroy Ponies

We're on B in the A - Z of Ashdown! B is for all sorts of Ashdown-related topics: The 1000 year old badger sett in the woods which is mentioned in the records of the medieval hunting chase, the rare and not so rare butterflies that fill Ashdown's glades in the summer months and the variety of birds that nest in the trees there.

There is also the beer. South Lodge, as well as containing the kitchens for the main house, was also the brewery. At a time when water was not safe to drink, beer was the staple beverage for men, women and children ( a low-alcohol version, small beer, was served to children.) The beer brewed at Ashdown was so good that the Cravens sent a carriage every week from Hamstead Marshall to fetch their supply.

 Also on B we have the Bronze Age barrows that can be seen on the line of the hill to the south west of the house. There are three round barrows visible on the skyline but also a pond barrow which is only visible on the ground as a depression sometimes filled with water. It is said that these barrows mark a Bronze Age territorial boundary. Certainly they are situated so as to be in clear sight from miles around.

And finally B is for the Balleroy Highland ponies. Balleroy is the name of the chateau in Normandy which is said to have inspired the design of Ashdown House. William Winde, Ashdown's most probable architect, was a pupil of the French architect Mansart who designed Balleroy in 1626. The stud that is now based in Ashdown village breeds handsome Balleroy highland ponies with a very sweet temperament!

The A-Z of Ashdown

Today we are starting a new feature on the blog, an A-Z of Ashdown covering various aspects historical, geographical, mythical and others that defy categorisation! I did consider doing a reverse alphabet and starting with Z but I think there will probably be a few letters we'll be scraping around to find topics for and Z is probably one of them. So I'll start with A, which has a number of potential Ashdown-related topics.

First there is Ashdown - the physical location, the "down covered in ash trees" which features in the Anglo-Saxon records as the generic name for the entire line of the Downs. This was the site of the Battle of Ashdown and local tradition places the battle on the land between Alfred's Castle and the Bronze Age Barrows to the south (more of them when we get to B!)

Then there is Ashdown House itself and Alfred's Castle, the Iron Age settlement. There is also the historic village of Ashbury, of which Ashdown became the "big house" in 1662. Ashbury has its own 15th century manor house, an ancient church, parts of which go back to the Norman period, and lots of other interesting historical features. It definitely deserves a blog piece.

There is also the airfield. During the Second World War there was an airfield to the north of the Mile Drive, by Red Barn Cottages. It ran east to west and there is still a gap in the trees where it cut through that is visible from the path that runs down from the Ridgeway to Red Barn. Parts of the old metal
interlocking landing strip can apparently be seen in the garden of Old Forge in Ashbury. British, American and Canadian troops were stationed at Ashdown (more on them when we reach W!) and they flew Spitfires and Mustangs out of the airfield (this is attested to by the paintings of Spitfires and Mustangs that were found on the walls of the drawing room after the troops had left. There was also a lifesize painting of Rita Hayworth!) There was a canteen at Red Barn and some of the crockery is still being dug up out of the fields whenever they are ploughed.

Local people remember two plane crashes at Ashdown. The first was a Mustang that caught fire as it was coming in to land. The second was when a plane that was landing at the airfield collided with a motorcyclist on the B4000. There are various memories of the Second World War recorded as part of the Ashbury Living History Project. We don't have much written information on the role of the Ashdown airfield so if anyone knows anything of Ashdown's wartime history, please get in touch!

Field of Dreams

To the south of Ashdown Park is a walk that takes you straight back into history. It begins, prosaically enough, in a layby near the water pumping station where you go through a gate into what I call the Field of Dreams. It's a bit like the Secret Garden; on one side you're standing by the road to Lambourn. On the other you're in Deep History.

On your right the remains of the medieval Park Pale of the Ashdown deer park sweep down the hillside, still imposing after hundreds of years. The park pale was erected in the Middle Ages when Ashdown was a hunting chase belonging to Glastonbury Abbey. It consists of a bank and ditch and in places it is still five feet wide and several feet high. Originally there would have been a paling fence on the top too high for a deer to leap.

As you cross the field, the remains of what look like a small camp come into view on your left. Some antiquarian books record this as a Roman fort although I have never been able to discover any details about it or find it on any maps. It's true that there were a number of Roman villas scattered across this part of the Downs, one of which was built into the centre of the Iron Age hillfort at Alfred's Castle. The current road along the Downs beneath the Ridgeway, the Portway, was a Roman Road to the major settlement at Wanborough. So it's possible there might have been a small fort nearby. As is the case with Alfred's Castle, you can see what look like banks and gateways, ditches, entrances and possibly the outline of internal walls.

A little further away across the field is an enormous barrow with a sarsen stone on the top and a ring of what I at first thought were sarsens around the base. On closer inspection they turned out to be tree stumps that looked almost petrified and I wondered if this had once been a site like Waylands Smithy that the Victorians had prettified by adding a ring of trees to complement the rugged beauty of the stones.

As you walk on across the wheat field you have a magnificent view of the park pale ascending the escarpment of Ashdown Upper Wood, a mysterious and ancient woodland with trees up to eight hundred years old and abundant wildlife. The path leads directly to a line of three Bronze Age barrows on the top of the hill. This was a Bronze Age tribal boundary and there are actually four barrows but one of them was sunken and now it is a pool in the winter. As you stand on the top of the hill looking at the sun on the gold dome of Ashdown House you can feel the years roll back. This is a place to come to dream.