Byline Festival

Ashdown Forest, a former royal hunting forest situated some 30 miles south-east of London, is a large area of lowland heathland whose ecological importance has been recognised by its designation as a UK Site of Special Scientific Interest and by the European Union as a Special Protection Area for birds and a Special Area of Conservation for its heathland habitats, and by its membership of Natura 2000, which brings together Europe's most important and threatened wildlife areas. Ashdown Forest lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, "...one of the best surviving, intact medieval landscapes in Northern Europe", characterised by rolling hills, steep-sided ghyll streams, sandstone outcrops, nationally high woodland cover, many interconnected ancient woods, narrow sunken lanes, scattered farmsteads and hamlets, small irregular-shaped fields, and open heaths, of which Ashdown is the greatest example. The forest's distinctive open heathland landscape with its hilltop clumps of conifer trees has been immortalised in the illustrations provided by EH Shepard for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories of A. A. Milne, who lived on the northern edge of the forest at Chuck Hatch.

Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some 30 miles (48 km) south of London in the county of East Sussex, England. Rising to an elevation of 732 feet (223 m) above sea level, its heights provide expansive vistas across the heavily wooded hills of the Weald to the chalk escarpments of the North Downs and South Downs on the horizon. Ashdown Forest's origins lie as a medieval hunting forest created soon after the Norman conquest of England. By 1283 the forest was fenced in by a 23 miles (37 km) pale enclosing an area of some 20 square miles (52 km2; 13,000 acres; 5,200 ha). Thirty-four gates and hatches in the pale, still remembered in place names such as Chuck Hatch and Chelwood Gate, allowed local people to enter to graze their livestock, collect firewood, and cut heather and bracken for animal bedding. The forest continued to be used by the monarchy and nobility for hunting into Tudor times, including notably Henry VIII, who had a hunting lodge at Bolebroke Castle, Hartfield and who courted Anne Boleyn at nearby Hever Castle. Ashdown Forest has a rich archaeological heritage. It contains much evidence of prehistoric human activity, with the earliest evidence of human occupation dating back to 50,000 years ago. There are important Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Romano-British remains. The forest was the centre of a nationally important iron industry on two occasions, during the Roman occupation of Britain and in the Tudor period when, in 1496, England's first blast furnace was built at Newbridge, near Coleman's Hatch, marking the beginning of Britain's modern iron and steel industry. In 1693, more than half the forest was taken into private hands, with the remainder set aside as common land. The latter today covers 9.5 square miles (25 km2; 6,100 acres; 2,500 ha) and is the largest area with open public access in South East England. The ecological importance of Ashdown Forest's heathlands is reflected by its designation as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, as a Special Protection Area for birds, and as a Special Area of Conservation for its heathland habitats. It is part of the European Natura 2000 network as it hosts some of Europe's most threatened species and habitats.Ashdown Forest is famous for serving as inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood, the setting for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories written by A. A. Milne. Milne lived on the northern edge of the forest and took his son, Christopher Robin, walking there. The artist E. H. Shepard drew on the landscapes of Ashdown Forest as inspiration for many of the illustrations he provided for the Pooh books.

Nutley Windmill is a grade II* listed open trestle post mill at Nutley, East Sussex, England which has been restored to working order.

Nutley is a village in the Wealden District of East Sussex, England. It lies about 5 mi (8.0 km) north-west of Uckfield, the main road being the A22. Nutley, Fairwarp and Maresfield together form the Maresfield civil parish. The village is on the southern edge of Ashdown Forest which was a deer hunting reserve from the time of King Edward II. Iron has also played an important role in the history of the area.

Old Lodge is a 103.1-hectare (255-acre) Local Nature Reserve west of Crowborough in East Sussex. It is privately owned. It is managed by Sussex Wildlife Trust. It is part of Ashdown Forest, which is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I, a Special Area of Conservation, a Special Protection Area and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.This highland site is mainly grassland and heather, with areas of gorse and scattered birch, oak, and Scots pine trees. Birds include common redstart and common crossbills and there are large nests of red wood ants.

Chelwood Gate is a small village within the civil parish of Danehill in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. Its nearest town is Uckfield, which lies approximately 6.6 miles (10.6 km) south-east from the village, just off the A22 road. The village is near the West Sussex border. Chelwood Gate was one of the entrances into Ashdown Forest through which John of Gaunt, the third surviving son of King Edward III, would have entered the forest from his hunting lodge. There is an Iron Age enclosure which is a Scheduled Monument due to its importance as a relatively rare example of a Wealden Iron Age settlement.The village church forms part of the Parish of All Saints Danehill with Chelwood Gate. The church was built as a 'Chapel of Ease' not long after the main parish building in Danehill was completed so that the residents local to Chelwood Gate would not have to travel the longer journey on foot to the church at Danehill.The village public house, the Red Lion, was built in the 19th century and was patronised in the past by Harold Macmillan and United States President John F Kennedy. Kennedy came to visit the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, in 1963 and a memorial to this event can be found on the Wych Cross road within the village. The village also has a village hall which is visited by a mobile library service, a village market and where there is also a nursery school.

Wych Cross is a location in Ashdown Forest, in the Wealden district of East Sussex. It lies on the sandstone forest ridge of the High Weald on the principal road from London to the east Sussex county town of Lewes at an elevated crossroads where it meets a road running east to west along the High Weald forest ridge. Wych Cross is situated about 36 miles south of London, roughly midway between London and the English Channel. The etymology of the place name (also spelt 'Wytch Cross' and 'Witch Cross' in documents of the early 19th century and earlier) is uncertain. "Wych" could be a variant of the common Old English placename "wic", denoting a homestead or settlement, it could possibly refer to a tree, the wych-elm, or it could refer to St. Richard de Wych, Bishop of Chichester.In the late 19th century a church dedicated to St. Richard de Wych was built east of Wych Cross by the then owner of the Ashdown Park estate, Thomas Charles Thompson, but it was never consecrated, and it was demolished in the 1970s. The Ashdown Forest Centre, the head office of the Conservators of Ashdown Forest, is situated at Wych Cross just half a mile east of the crossroads. It is housed in three historic Wealden barns—an Administration Barn, Information Barn (visitor centre) and Education Barn—that were conveyed to the site and rebuilt there in the early 1980s. Notable buildings at Wych Cross include the present hotel building (including a deconsecrated chapel containing eight Harry Clarke stained glass windows ) at Ashdown Park, and Wych Cross Place, built around 1900. A hymn tune named "WYCH CROSS" was composed by Erik Routley, who was born in Brighton, about 20 miles south of Wych Cross. In various DC Comics (notably Neil Gaiman's The Sandman) Wych Cross was the location of Fawney Rig, the Sussex manor house originally owned by John Constantine's ancestor Lady Johanna, and later by Roderick Burgess; and in which Dream was imprisoned for decades, along with the nearby old people's home in which Burgess's son, Alex, becomes a resident.

The Hundred Acre Wood (also spelled as 100 Aker Wood, Hundred-Acre Wood, and 100 Acre Wood; also known as simply "The Wood") is a part of the fictional land inhabited by Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in the Winnie-the-Pooh series of children's stories by author A. A. Milne. The wood is visited regularly by the young boy Christopher Robin, who accompanies Pooh and company on their many adventures. In A. A. Milne's books, the term "Hundred Acre Wood" is actually used for a specific part of the larger Forest, centred on Owl's house (see the map in the book, as well as numerous references in the text to the characters going "into" or "out of" the Hundred Acre Wood as they go between Owl's house and other Forest locations). However, in the Pooh movies, and in general conversation with most Pooh fans, "The Hundred Acre Wood" is used for the entire world of Winnie-the-Pooh, the Forest and all the places it contains. The Hundred Acre Wood of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories was inspired by Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England. A. A. Milne's country home at Cotchford Farm, Hartfield was situated just north of Ashdown Forest, and Five Hundred Acre Wood is a dense beech wood that Christopher Robin Milne would explore on his way from Cotchford Farm onto the Forest. Five Hundred Acre Wood is long-established, having been originally sold off from the Forest in 1678. The wood remains privately owned, being part of Buckhurst Park estate, and is not therefore generally accessible to the public, though two footpaths which are public rights of way, one of which is part of a long-distance footpath, the Wealdway, cross through the wood and may be used by members of the public. Milne was inspired by the landscape of Ashdown Forest to use it as the setting for his Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and many features from the stories can be identified with specific locations in the forest. The car park at the hilltop of Gills Lap (the Galleon's Lap of the Pooh stories) in Ashdown Forest, (grid reference TQ 467 315), contains a display panel with a map of the surrounding area and the features from several of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories marked on it. For example, Five Hundred Acre Wood lies a short distance to the north-east, while the "Enchanted Place" is a small wooded area 660 feet (200 m) to the north. A memorial plaque dedicated to A. A. Milne and his illustrator, Ernest H. Shepard, lies 330 feet (100 m) away. Five Hundred Acre Wood lies a short distance to the north-east.

Emerson College, UK was founded in 1962 by Francis Edmunds. It is now situated on Pixton Hill, Forest Row in East Sussex, UK. It was named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet and transcendentalist. For the past c.60 years there has been an international community of students, teachers, and researchers living and studying on the site inspired by the philosophy and teachings of Rudolf Steiner—which he called Anthroposophy. A book on the history of Emerson College was published in 2013.

Birch Grove, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex, England is a country house dating from 1926. It was the family home of the British prime minister Harold Macmillan, Earl of Stockton, who died there in 1986. During Macmillan's time, Charles De Gaulle, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nikita Khrushchev, Jawaharlal Nehru and John F. Kennedy stayed as guests at Birch Grove. The house is now owned by the Scottish entrepreneur James Hay. Birch Grove is a Grade II listed building.

Isaac Roberts' Observatory was an observatory, installed in the private home of the British astronomer Isaac Roberts. It was in Crowborough, Sussex, and was active from 1890, when Roberts installed it, until his death in 1904. The observatory appears in the List of observatory codes of the Minor Planet Center with the code 001.

Forest Row was a railway station on the Three Bridges to Tunbridge Wells Central Line which closed in 1967, a casualty of the Beeching Axe.The station opened on 1 October 1866 and the buildings were designed by Charles Henry Driver.The station was one of the busiest of the intermediate stations on the line and was enlarged in 1897 with the addition of a new platform on the Down side, connected to the main station side via a footbridge. The station also had a goods shed and two sidings. Ironically, the station's final years saw an increased number of passengers using it as residential development took place around the old Forest Row village. In recognition of the increased patronage, commuter trains from London were extended from East Grinstead to terminate here. At the time of closure, Forest Row was taking over £5,000 per annum in revenue and 200 commuters were using the station to travel to London each day.After the station closed, it was used for the filming of an episode of the children's television programme Do Not Adjust Your Set in August/September 1967 featuring a young David Jason.[1] The site was then sold to a club for over £4,000 and the station buildings were quickly swept away. Nevertheless, a short section of the station platforms can still be found, and the goods shed stands together with other light industrial units. A brick-built coal merchant's office can also be found on Station Road.