Environmental politics, custom and personal testimony: Memory and lifespace on the late Victorian Ashdown Forest, Sussex

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 470-495

  Short, Brian ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Enviromental politics; Lifespace; Memory

Indexed keywords

CONSERVATION; ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS; ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION; PLANNING HISTORY; RURAL HISTORY;

ASHDOWN FOREST; EAST SUSSEX; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; ENGLAND; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE; WORLD;

EID: 10444230415     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0305-7488(03)00042-2     Document Type: Article

References (102)

1. P. Joyce In F.M.L. Thompson (Ed.) The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950 People and Their Environment Vol. 2 1990 not known Cambridge 152-153
2. Lord Eversley Commons, Forests and Footpaths: The Story of the Battle During the Last Forty-five Years for Public Rights Over the Commons, Forests and Footpaths of England and Wales 1910 Not known London passim
3. A fragment of the Great forest The Spectator 15 February 1879 207-208
4. See B. Short (Ed.) The Ashdown Forest Dispute 1876-1882: Environmental Politics and Custom, Lewes 1998 15-28
5. The National Archives: Public Record Office (hereafter TNA:PRO) IR18/10352. Hartfield Tithe File 1842.
6. The five parishes were Buxted, East Grinstead, Hartfield, Maresfield and Withyham. The combined area of these large Wealden parishes was 50 117 acres, of which 17 759 acres (35.4 percent) were woodland or common, and Ashdown took up 25.9 percent (i.e. the area of common and woodland was significantly greater than the area enclosed within the pale, testifying to the large amount of such land within this part of the High Weald more generally).
7. W. Cobbett Rural Rides Vol. I 1957 Not known London 1853[1957], 66-67
8. Ashdown Forest Earl de la Warr v Miles and Hale Book of Documents (Volume II) 1693-1879, 126;
9. The latter is one of two large bound volumes of papers for the Ashdown case, prepared for the use of Webster QC in acting for the defendants, and placed on deposit at the University of Sussex by the Conservators of Ashdown Forest; B. Short (Ed.) The Ashdown Forest Dispute 1876-1882: Environmental Politics and Custom, Lewes, 1998 49, fn. 91
10. Gilbert White and George Bourne as cited in J.M. Neeson Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820 1993 Not known Cambridge 178-179
11. J.M. Wilson The Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (6 Volumes) 1870 Not known London
12. For a fuller analysis of landownership in this area and in Sussex see B. Short Landownership in Victorian Sussex, in K. Leslie B. Short (Eds.) An Historical Atlas of Sussex 1999 Not known Chichester 96-97
13. East Sussex Record Office (hereafter ESRO) TD/E 149 Tithe map and apportionment for Hartfield, 1842.
14. ESRO AMS 3859. The trial was held on 18-20 February, 2-5 March, 9-11 March and 14 April 1880. The order from Bacon, V.C. lists the witnesses and evidence supplied; see also Lord Eversley Commons, Forests and Footpaths: The Story of the Battle during the last Forty-five years for Public Rights over the Commons, Forests and Footpaths of England and Wales 1910 Not known London 116
15. For the legal aspects of the case, including biographical material on the counsel involved, see R. Cocks The Great Ashdown Forest Case, in T.G. Watkin (Ed.) The Legal Record and Historical Reality, Cardiff 1989 175-197
16. The report of the case can be read in The Law Journal Reports, New Series, 49 (8 August, 1880) 476-490.
17. R. Cocks The Great Ashdown Forest case, in T.G. Watkin (Ed.) The Legal Record and Historical Reality, Cardiff 1989 192
18. For the full comments of Lord Justice James, The Law Times, 44 (4 June 1881) 490
19. A copy of the subsequent enclosure award (1887) is at ESRO QDD/6/E 15; a copy of an early draft of an agreement to compromise in Hale and others v. De La Warr dated 9 December 1881 is to be found in the de la Warr papers (ESRO DLW 459-60).
20. Commons Land Regulation (Ashdown Forest) Provisional Order Confirmation Act 1885 (48/49 Vict. c.56). Lord Eversley Commons, Forests and Footpaths: The Story of the Battle during the last Forty-five years of the Public Rights over the Commons, Forests and Footpaths of England and Wales 1910 Not known London Appendix II, 333-334, ESRO QDD/6/E
21. and see also J. Irons, Aspects of the impact of man on the historical ecology of Ashdown Forest, Sussex, before 1885, unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Sussex, 1982, 60-61.
22. ESRO AMS 3781; for the costs in the action see ESRO AMS 3862, 4047. Attribution of the costs between the litigants was itself a protracted legal proceeding during the latter half of 1881 (ESRO AMS 3979-4004).
23. B. Short, Raper (William) Augustus (1845-1940), in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/75305
24. The material, including the five small books, was subsequently transferred to ESRO, where it is now listed as ESRO ACC 3715/1-6.
25. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Case, 130, 191.
26. Raper also added personal comments in a separate document when going over the evidence with those who might be called as witnesses, or in copying the proofs. Thus of Thomas Newnham he wrote 'Infirm memory vague but will keep to what is noted down'; James Wheatley 'has been a regular litter cutter and stone digger he is so deaf that only his son can make him hear anything'; and of William Mighell 'described by Tingley as having a memory like an almanack but he scarcely seems to answer the description' (ESRO AMS 3905, 4055). Conversion of first person evidence into third person written statements is a longstanding legal practice which Raper largely avoided, although this may have been a personal decision rather than being based on contemporary legal process. The loss of the original voice was thereby minimised, although it was by no means 'raw and unadulterated'. See M. Chamberlain P. Thompson (Eds.) Narrative and Genre 1998 Not known London 17
27. D.K. Dunaway W.K. Baum Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology 1996 Not Known Walnut Creek, CA 9
28. nowhere amongst the voluminous papers relating to this case is there a list of Raper's actual questions for the deponents. On transcription from interviews see S. Caunce Oral history and the Local Historian 1994 Not known London 180
29. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 100-101.
30. H. Slim P. Thompson O. Bennett N. Cross Ways of listening, reproduced in R. Perks A. Thomson (Eds.) The Oral History Reader 1998 Not known London 114-125
31. T. Lummis Structure and validity in oral evidence; in R. Perks A. Thomson (Eds.) The Oral History Reader 1998 Not known London 273-283
32. Robert Edwards Sr left a diary, extracts for parts of the years 1815 and 1823-1824 being presented in A. Cheal A Buckhurst diary Sussex County Magazine 12 1938 392-395
33. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 66, 172;
34. For a portrait c. 1905, reputedly that of Granny Tester, a redoubtable midwife of Nutley, see P. Kirby Forest Camera: A Portrait of Ashdown 1998 Not known Poundgate, Sussex 25; This work contains many vivid portraits of Ashdown Forest and its residents, photographed from about 1890 by Arthur Francis (1855-1934)
35. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 80-82. Martha's evidence was an excellent account of life on the northern fringes of Ashdown, made all the more interesting by the fact that Raper then also interviewed her husband, James Baker, a farmer of 63 acres, whose lengthy testimony interweaves with, and complements, that of his wife. Martha was subpoena'd to appear in the witness box for the defendants and paid 10s conduct money at the end of January 1880 (ESRO AMS 3840-5). Raper commented 'a most intelligent old lady and will make a good witness. Bring family bible' (ESRO AMS 3905).
36. T. Eagleton Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontes 1988 Not known London 106
37. For the importance of internal consistency, confirmation of accounts, bias and early memory see P. Thompson The Voice of the Past 2000 Not known Oxford
38. M. de Certeau The Practice of Everyday Life 1988 Not known Berkeley and Los Angeles xiv-xv, 37
39. TNA:PRO LRRO 67/1, 48-49.
40. Various attempts to formulate a body which would mediate between the manorial lord and the commoners, and which would also protect the rights of commoners from those without any such rights, were made. The agreement of 1816 was superseded by a Commoners Association formed in 1830, and then in 1874 by 'The Conservators of the Commonable Rights of Ashdown Forest'. Proceedings at manorial court barons also continually dealt with presentations of illegal encroachments and cutting of vegetation (Ashdown Forest Earl de la Warr v Miles and Hale book of Documents Volume II).
41. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 184-185.
42. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 27-28.
43. As such the actions of the poorer groups represent the 'weapons of the weak' See J.C. Scott Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance 1986 Not known New Haven
44. For the wider context of these movements, see B. Short The decline of living-in servants in the transition to capitalist farming: A critique of the Sussex evidence Sussex Archaeological Collections 122 1984 147-164
45. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 112-113.
46. A. Portelli Oral testimony, the law and the making of history; the 'April 7' murder trial History Workshop Journal 20 1985 8
47. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 179. Unusually Raper reverts to a third-person note within his transcription of Henry Scott's evidence to the effect that 'he also speaks of the litter cutters breaking into the bounds or reservations of 1816 and cutting the litter but he does not give any intelligible reason'.
48. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 99, 178;
49. And see M. Reed Gnawing it out: A new look at economic relations in nineteenth-century rural England Rural History 1 1990 83-94
50. S. Featherstone Jack Hill's horse: Narrative form and oral history Oral History 1991 59-70
51. ESRO AMS 3904.
52. B. Short The Ashdown Forest Dispute 1876-1882: Environmental Politics and Custom 1998 77, 93, 113
53. The coal industry had increased its output more than twentyfold between 1700 and 1850 supplying coal to households which had previously relied on wood, turf or furze for fuel. See also G. Clark Too much Revolution: agriculture in the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1860 in J. Mokyr (Ed.) The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective 1999 Not known London 234
54. By 1866 a railway could move coal between Tunbridge Wells and East Grinstead; the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was distributing coal from its Deptford wharf, and by the mid-1860s was bringing Midlands coal around London to the Sussex area. See J. Farrant Growth of communications 1840-1914, in K. Leslie B. Short (Eds.)An Historical Atlas of Sussex 1999 Not known Chichester 81
55. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 136, 172, 181, 190.
56. See C. Patmore. How I Managed and Improved my Estate (reprinted from St James Gazette 1886) for his own observations of the Ashdown residents;
57. And see also B. Short Conservation, class and custom: Lifespace and conflict in a nineteenth-century forest environment Rural History 10 1999 127-154
58. C. Ginzburg Clues, Myths and the Historical Method 1989 Not known Baltimore 159-160, 163
59. C. Ginzburg The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller 1992 Not known London xv
60. D. Balestracci The Renaissance in the Fields: Family Memoirs of a Fifteenth-Century Tuscan Peasant 1999 Not known Philadelphia xviii
61. ESRO AMS 3904: Evidence of Bernard Hale and John Miles. George Ewart Evans noted for Suffolk that some parents discouraged their children from learning to read, as it would take them 'out of their station in life', but thereby emphasising the importance of an oral tradition. See his Where Beards Wag All: The Relevance of the Oral Tradition, London. 1970, 21-22
62. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 116-117, 167, 224.
63. B. Short, The Ashdown Forest Dispute, 18, 82.
64. D. Lowenthal The Past is a Foreign Country 1985 Not Known Cambridge 41
65. E.F. Loftus Eyewitness Testimony 1979 Not known Harvard 97
66. G. Gudjonsson The Psychology of Interrogations, Confessions and Testimony 1992 Not known London 89
67. C. Patmore, How l Managed and Improved my Estate (reprinted from St James Gazette 1886) 11-12.
68. One is also reminded here of Franz Boas' warning to his students to beware of 'intelligent Indians' who may have 'formed a theory' about the research in progress. See A. Portelli Oral history as genre in M. Chamberlain P. Thompson (Eds.) Narrative and Genre 1998 Not known London 30-31. For exchange value of testimony, see A. Portelli, Oral testimony, the law and the making of history, 17
69. D. Lowenthal The Past is a Foreign Country 1985 Not known Cambridge 209
70. K. Snell Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660-1900 1985 Not known Cambridge 101, 103
71. R. Samuel Village Life and Labour 1975 Not known London 139-263
72. R. Samuel East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding 1981 Not known London
73. P. Joyce Democratic Subjects: The Self and the Social in nineteenth-Century England 1994 Not known Cambridge 23-82
74. J. Arch Joseph Arch: The Story of his Life, Told by Himself 1898 Not known London
75. From Ploughtail to Parliament: An Autobiography 1986 Not known London
76. F. Kitchen Brother to the Ox 1940 Not known London
77. See, for example G. Sturt (alias Bourne) William Smith: Potter and Farmer, 1770-1858 1919 Not known London [1978]
78. G. Sturt, The Bettesworth Book, London, 1978 or The Journals of George Sturt (2 volumes), Cambridge, 1967.
79. For an appreciation of the books of George Ewart Evans from Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay, London, 1956 to Spoken History, London, 1987, see A. Howkins Inventing everyman: George Ewart Evans, oral history and national identity Oral History 22 1994 26-32
80. M. Chamberlain Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village 1975 Not known London
81. M. Bragg Speak for England 1976 Not known London
82. For a review of the achievements of oral history and its mainstreaming, see P. Thompson The Voice of the Past 2000 Not known Oxford 82-117
83. K. Thompson Short Guides to Records: Second Series Guides 25-48 1997 25-28
84. Settlement papers are used systematically in K. Snell Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900 1985 Not known Cambridge 17-66
85. For settlement examinations covering the Forest parishes of West Hoathly and East Grinstead, as well as nearby Horsted Keynes, see N. Pilbeam I. Nelson (Eds.) Mid Sussex Poor Law Records Lewes, 1601-1835 2001
86. For more on the genres, and hence conventions, of life story work see the various essays in M. Chamberlain P. Thompson (Eds.) Narrative and Genre 1998 Not known London
87. Examples which document the concern for vanishing rural lifestyles in Sussex include R. Heath The English Peasant: Studies Historical, Local and Biographical 1893 Not known Wakefield [1978]
88. W.D. Parish A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect 1957 Not known Chichester originally compiled in 1875
89. or J.C. Egerton Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways 1884
90. and see V. Gammon Folk song collecting in Surrey and Sussex 1834-1914 History Workshop Journal 10 1980 61-89
91. C. Ní Laoire Life histories and the study of rural youth migration in, A. Hughes C. Morris S. Seymour (Eds.) Ethnography and Rural Research 2000 Not known Cheltenham 90
92. On the need to examine work as a cultural activity, and as the site of active cultural agency, rather than simply an economic one, see P. Joyce The historical meanings of work: An introduction, in P. Joyce (Ed.) The Historical Meanings of Work 1987 Not known Cambridge 1-30
93. A. Paasi Deconstructing regions: Notes on the scales of spatial life Environment and Planning A 23 1991 246
94. R. Faith The class struggle in fourteenth-century England, in R. Samuel (Ed.) People's History and Socialist Theory 1981 Not known London 50
95. For the practical incorporation of past memories into contemporary defence of community activities, see D. Noyes R.D. Abrahams From calendar custom to national memory: European commonplaces, in D. Ben-Amos L. Weissberg (Eds.) Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity 1999 Not known Detroit, MI 77-98
96. R. Peet Modern Geographical Thought 1998 Not known London 151
97. T. Hagerstrand Survival and arena: On the life-history of individuals in relation to their physical environment in T. Carlstein D. Parkes N. Thrift (Eds.) Timing Space and Spacing Time. Volume 3: Human Activity and Time Geography 1978 Not known London 122-145
98. D. Parkes N. Thrift Times, Spaces and Places: A Chronogeographic Perspective 1980 not known London 246
99. A. Pred Place, Practice and Structure: Social and Spatial Transformation in Southern Sweden 1750-1850 1986 Not known Cambridge
100. G. Hoppe J. Langton Time-geography and economic development: The changing structure of livelihood positions on arable farms in nineteenth century Sweden Geografiska Annaler 68B 1986 115-137
101. G. Hoppe J. Langton Peasantry to Capitalism: Western Östergotland in the nineteenth Century 1994 Not known Cambridge
102. A. Gilbert The new regional geography in English and French-speaking countries Progress in Human Geography 12 1988 217