What real forest in England inspired the Hundred Acre Wood?

The real English forest that inspired the Hundred Acre Wood was Ashdown Forest.

Ashdown Forest lies in East Sussex in southeastern England, near Hartfield, where A. A. Milne lived at Cotchford Farm. The landscape of open heath, pine trees, birch, gorse and rolling ridges became the setting for the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and strongly influenced E. H. Shepard’s illustrations.

Several fictional locations have recognizable real-world counterparts. The Hundred Acre Wood was based particularly on Five Hundred Acre Wood, while Gill’s Lap helped inspire prominent hills and viewpoints in the books. Christopher Robin Milne later wrote that Pooh’s forest and Ashdown Forest were effectively identical.

The name can cause confusion because England has several famous forests, including Sherwood Forest, Epping Forest and the New Forest. None is the principal setting associated with Milne’s Pooh stories. Ashdown Forest is not merely a later Disney invention; its connection reaches back to the original books, published in the 1920s.