THE YEARS THROUGH TO the end of the sixteenth century are sometimes seen as witnessing the transition from a medieval economy to a more modern agrarian capitalism. While this might hold true for prosperous localities, it cannot be read off as a linear progression, nor a spatial one, since the same cannot necessarily be assumed for socially and economically more marginal areas such as the lowland forests and heathlands.

Much of Ashdown would have reverted to birch scrub by 1500 and the early medieval assarts had been hard to sustain. Nevertheless, they remained the most numerous form of tenure: they were in practice secure, held with old-established and unchanging rents, with low entry fines often equivalent to an annual rent or single heriot, such as demanded in Duddleswell manor. But here, as elsewhere, Ashdown's ‘peasantry’ was itself intensely differentiated: ‘different stories for different groups of peasants’. Much depended on the resources offered by the local environment, the consequent seasonality of work, the family and household structure and the manorial institutions.

However, although the land itself was in poor order, by 1500 many of the small severalty farms around Ashdown did have some arable land, generally less than ten acres, primarily for oats, with some wheat and peas. There was a hesitant recovery from the post-Black Death recession. But much was now under pasture, and the enclosed land was still relatively well wooded. By the 1590s the Buckhurst estate, largely in Hartfield and Withyham, and much lying in the more favoured Medway Valley, had 1,329 acres of arable, accounting for just under a third of the farmland. Most fields here were between three and 12 acres in size, commonly with encompassing shaws. There were 1,026 acres of highly prized and frequently subdivided meadow in the Medway Valley, and 2,052 acres of pasture, some stretching alongside roads, as at Lye Green outside Friar's Gate.

With the farms held in severalty, some flexibility was possible. Crops would be taken for a year or so, and then the poor soils allowed to recover once more under grass. A fallow season might be introduced and marling used to ameliorate the soils.