Word Net
weald n : an area of open or forested countryMoby Thesaurus
alkali flat, alluvial plain, basin, bottomland, bushveld, campo, champaign, champaign country, coastal plain, delta, desert, down, downs, fell, flat, flat country, flatland, flats, grass veld, grassland, heath, lande, level, llano, lowland, lowlands, lunar mare, mare, mesa, mesilla, moor, moorland, open country, pampa, pampas, peneplain, plain, plains, plateau, playa, prairie, salt flat, salt marsh, salt pan, savanna, sebkha, steppe, table, tableland, timber, timberland, tree veld, tundra, upland, vega, veld, wide-open spaces, wold, woodland, woodssee Weald
English
Etymology
etyl ang wealdPronunciation
- a UK /wi.əld, /wi.@ld/
Noun
- A wood or forest; a wooded land or region; also, an open country; often used in place names.
See also
Old English
Etymology 1
Common etyl gem *walthuz, whence also Old High German wald, Old Norse völlrNoun
Etymology 2
Common etyl gem waltham, whence also Old High German walt, Old Norse vald.Noun
Usage notes
Used in the form ġewealdThe Weald () is the name given to a physiographic
area in south-east England situated
between the parallel chalk
escarpments of the
North
and the South Downs.
It should be regarded in two separate parts: the sandstone ‘’High Weald’’ in
the centre; and the clay
‘’Low Weald’’ periphery. The name, Saxon in origin,
signifies woody country, which still applies today: scattered farms
and villages betray the The Weald‘s past, often in their
names.
Etymology
"Weald" derives from Anglo-Saxon weald, from an ancient Indo-European root meaning "forest" or "wild". Wold, from the same root as weald, also originally meant "forest" or "wildlands" . The Saxons also gave it the alternative name of Andresleaz , taking it from the even earlier name Coit Andred (very large): the Romans, in turn, Saltus Andred, the great chace or forest. See also the additional notes .The adjective for "weald" is "wealden".
Geology
The Weald is the eroded remains of a geological
structure, an anticline, a dome of layered
Lower
Cretaceous rocks cut
through by weathering
to expose the layers as sandstone ridges and clay valleys. The oldest rocks
exposed at the centre of the anticline are correlated with the
Purbeck
Beds of the Upper
Jurassic. Above these, the Cretaceous rocks, include the
Wealden
Group of alternating sands and clays - the Ashdown Sand,
Wadhurst Clay, Tunbridge Wells Sand (collectively known as the
Hastings Beds) and the Weald Clay. The Wealden Group is overlain by
the Lower
Greensand and the Gault Formation, consisting of the Gault Clay and
the Upper
Greensand.
The rocks of the central part of the anticline
include hard sandstones, and these form hills now called the High
Weald. The peripheral areas are mostly of softer sandstones and
clays and form a gentler rolling landscape, the Low Weald. The
Weald-Artois
Anticline continues some 65 km (40 miles) further
south-eastwards under the Straits of
Dover, and includes the Boulonnais
of France.
Many important fossils have been found in the
sandstones and clays of the Weald, including for example Baryonyx. The
famous scientific hoax of Piltdown Man
was claimed to have come from a gravel pit at Piltdown near
Lewes. The
First Iguanodon was
identified by a Lewes Doctor Gideon
Mantell in 1819 from a pit near Cuckfield
History
Some of the following notes in the early part of this section are taken from the High Weald websitePrehistoric evidence suggests that, following
after the Mesolithic
hunter-gatherers, the Neolithic
inhabitants had turned to farming, with the resultant clearance of
the forest. With the Iron Age came
the first use of the Weald as an industrial area. Wealden
sandstones contain ironstone, and with the
additional presence of large amounts of timber for making charcoal for fuel, the area was
the centre of the Wealden
iron industry from then, through the Roman
times, until the last forge was closed in 1813. The index to
the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain lists 33 iron mines: 67%
of these are in the Weald.
The entire Weald was originally heavily forested.
Over the centuries deforestation for the shipbuilding, charcoal,
forest
glass, and brickmaking industries has left the Low Weald with
only remnants of that woodland cover.
Settlements on the Weald are widely scattered,
and villages as such did not appear until the 13/14th centuries.
Before this time, the Weald was used as summer grazing land,
particularly for pannage
by communities living in the surrounding areas. Many places within
the Weald have retained names from this time, linking them to the
original communities by the addition of the suffix "-den"
– for example Tenterden was the
area used by the people of Thanet. Permanent
settlements in much of the Weald developed much later than in other
parts of lowland Britain, although there were as many as one
hundred furnaces and forges operating by the later 16th
century, employing large numbers of people .
Geography
The Weald in its entirety begins in the west to the north-east of Petersfield in Hampshire; from where it crosses the counties of Surrey and Kent in the north, and West and East Sussex in the south. In extent it covers about 85 miles (135 km) from west to east, and about 30 miles (50 km) from north to south, covering an area of some 1,300 km² (500 square miles). The eastern end of the High Weald, the English Channel coast, is marked in the centre by the high sandstone cliffs from Hastings to Pett Level; and by former sea cliffs now fronted by the Pevensey and Romney Marshes on either side.Much of the High Weald, the central part, is
designated as the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
Its landscape is described as one of rolling hills, studded with
sandstone outcrops and cut by streams to form steep-sided ravines
(called gills); small irregular-shaped fields and patches of
heathland, abundant woodlands; scattered farmsteads and sunken
lanes and paths . Remnants of a possible Royal forest
(the chace) exist today as Ashdown
Forest.
There are centres of settlement, the largest of
which are Horsham, Burgess
Hill, Haywards
Heath, Tonbridge,
Tunbridge
Wells; Crowborough;
and the area along the coast from Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea
to Rye
and Hythe.
The geological map shows the High Weald in lime
green (9a).
The Low Weald , the periphery of the Weald, is
shown as darker green on the map (9), and has an entirely different
character. It is in effect the eroded outer edges of the High
Weald, revealing a mixture of sandstone outcrops within the
underlying clay. As a result, the landscape is of wide and
low-lying clay vales with small woodlands (“shaws”)
and fields. There is a great deal of surface water: ponds and many
meandering streams.
Some areas, such as the flat plain around
Crawley,
have been utilised for urban use: here are Gatwick
Airport and its related developments and the Horley-Crawley
commuter settlements. Otherwise the Low Weald retains its historic
settlement pattern, where the villages and small towns occupy
harder outcrops of rocks. There are no large towns on the Low
Weald, although Ashford and
Reigate lie
immediately on the northern edge. Settlements tend to be small and
linear, because of its original wooded nature and heavy clay
soils.
The Weald is drained by many streams radiating
from it, the majority being tributaries of the surrounding major
rivers: particularly of the Mole,
Medway,
Stour,
Rother,
Cuckmere,
Ouse,
Adur
and Arun. Many of
those streams provided power to watermills,
blast
furnaces and hammers which once operated the iron industry and
cloth mills.
Communications
The M25, M26 and M20 motorways all use the Vale of Holmesdale to the north, and therefore run along or near the northern edge of the Weald. The M23/A23 road to Brighton , utilises the western, narrower, part of the Weald where there are stream headwaters, crossing it from north to south. Other roads take similar routes, although they often have long hills and many bends: the A21 to Hastings is still beset with traffic delays, despite having had some new sections. Five railways once crossed the Weald; building them provided the engineers with difficulties in crossing the terrain, with the hard sandstone adding to their problems. The Brighton Main Line followed the same route as its road predecessors: although it necessitated the long tunnel near Balcombe and the Ouse Valley Viaduct. Tributaries of the River Ouse provided some assistance in the building of now-closed East Grinstead-Lewes and the Uckfield-Lewes lines. The principal main-line railway to Hastings had to negotiate difficult terrain when it was first built, necessitating many sharp curves and tunnels; and similar problems had to be faced with the Ashford-Hastings line. The Weald is especially popular with ramblers, cyclists and other recreational users; and several Long distance footpaths cross it.Farming
Neither the thin infertile sands of the High Weald or the wet sticky clays of the Low Weald are suited to intensive arable farming and the topography of the area often increases the difficulties. There are limited areas of fertile greensand which can be used for intensive vegetable growing, as in the valley of the Western Rother. Historically the area of cereals grown has varied greatly with changes in prices, increasing during the Napoleonic Wars and during and since World War II. The Weald has its own breed of cattle, called the Sussex although it has been as numerous in Kent and parts of Surrey. Bred from the strong hardy oxen, which continued to be used to plough the clay soils of the Low Weald longer than in most places, these red beef cattle were highly praised by Arthur Young in his book "Agriculture of Sussex" when visiting Sussex in the 1790s. William Cobbett commented on finding some of the finest cattle on some of the region's poorest subsistence farms on the High Weald. Pigs, which were kept by most households in the past, were able to be fattened in autumn on acorns in the extensive oak woods.Wildlife
The Weald has largely maintained its wooded character, with woodland still covering 23% of the overall area (one of the highest levels in England) and the proportion is considerably higher in some central parts. The sandstones of the Wealden rocks are usually acidic, often leading to the development of acidic habitats such as heathland, the largest remaining areas of which are in Ashdown Forest and near Thursley.Although common in France, the wild
boar became extinct in
Great
Britain and Ireland by the 17th
century, but wild breeding populations have recently returned in
the Weald,
following escapes from boar farms.
Culture
The Weald has been associated with many writers, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable examples include John Evelyn (1620-1706), Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), and Rudyard Kipling (1864-1936) Some of the locations of A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories, for example the Poohsticks bridge and Hundred Acre Wood, are based on Ashdown Forest near Milne's country home at Hartfield.Sport
The game of cricket may have originated prior to the 13th century in the Weald (see History of English cricket to 1696). The related game Stoolball is still popular in the Weald, mostly played by ladies teams.Other English Wealds and Wolds
Several other areas in southern England have the name "Weald", but are outside "the" Weald as described above. These include North Weald in Essex, and Harrow Weald in north-west London."Wold" is used as the name for various open
rolling upland areas in the North of England,
including the Yorkshire
Wolds and the Lincolnshire
Wolds, although these by contrast are chalk uplands.
References
weald in German: Weald
weald in Dutch: Weald
weald in Norwegian: Weald
weald in Portuguese: Weald