IT MIGHT BE THOUGHT that the conclusion of the Ashdown Forest Case, the resulting registration of the Forest and the establishment of Conservators would have subdued conflict and ushered in some tranquillity; and that the gradual erosion of the Forest's rural economy as structural, economic and social changes in the twentieth century brought more leisure time, more commuting and a greater significance for conservation would have remodelled Ashdown into the apparently peaceful open space that the casual visitor sees today.

Not a bit of it. This chapter instead relates a familiar theme as conflict continued through to the First World War. The Conservators faced ongoing challenges of many kinds, some of which are indeed still faced at the present time. As noted in previous chapters, the Forest was now being actively sought as a fashionable address, transport links were easier to London, and Ashdown's heathland was seen as beautiful and wild, rather than an ugly, unproductive space.

The chapter therefore further depicts the impact, both positive and negative, of those wealthy families. For example, their arrivals also ushered in feelings among cottagers and smallholders, many of them Raper's deponents, that their own space and customary uses of the Forest were under threat. After all, ‘Regulation of access to common resources necessarily involves some degree of exclusion which may well be socially differentiated.’ The very fact that an area was demarcated for conservation could itself provoke social unrest, as activities and groups were now to be measured against a new set of criteria. And, to add further context, another theme addresses the impacts of modernity, such as motor cars (with attendant need for ‘motor houses’ or warning signs to slow down near schools), mains gas and drainage, and telegraph poles.