Concept

Weald

Summary
The Weald (ˈwiːld) is an area of South East England between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It crosses the counties of Hampshire, Surrey, West Sussex, East Sussex, and Kent. It has three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the centre; the clay "Low Weald" periphery; and the Greensand Ridge, which stretches around the north and west of the Weald and includes its highest points. The Weald once was covered with forest, and its name, Old English in origin, signifies "woodland". The term is still used today, as scattered farms and villages sometimes refer to the Weald in their names. The name "Weald" is derived from the Old English , meaning "forest" (cognate of German Wald, but unrelated to English "wood", which has a different origin). This comes from a Germanic root of the same meaning, and ultimately from Indo-European. Weald is specifically a West Saxon form; wold is the Anglian form of the word. The Middle English form of the word is wēld, and the modern spelling is a reintroduction of the Old English form attributed to its use by William Lambarde in his A Perambulation of Kent of 1576. In early medieval Britain, the area had the name Andredes weald, meaning "the forest of Andred", the latter derived from Anderida, the Roman name of present-day Pevensey. The area is also referred to in early English texts as Andredesleage, where the second element, leage, is another Old English word for "woodland", represented by the modern . The adjective for "Weald" is "wealden". Geology of East SussexWeald Basin and Weald–Artois anticline The Weald is the eroded remains of a geological structure, an anticline, a dome of layered Lower Cretaceous rocks cut through by weathering to expose the layers as sandstone ridges and clay valleys. The oldest rocks exposed at the centre of the anticline are correlated with the Purbeck Beds of the Upper Jurassic. Above these, the Cretaceous rocks, include the Wealden Group of alternating sands and claysthe Ashdown Sand Formation, Wadhurst Clay Formation, Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation (collectively known as the Hastings Beds) and the Weald Clay.
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