Prior to the conquest, Ashdown seems simply to have been an unnamed part of the vast, sparsely populated, and in places dense and impenetrable woodland known to the Anglo-Saxons as Andredes weald (the forest of Andred), from which the present-day Weald derives its name. The Weald, of which Ashdown Forest is the largest remaining part, stretched for between the chalk escarpments of the North and South Downs and for over from east to west from Kent into Hampshire.