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 is in actuality Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England, where the Winnie-the-Pooh stories were set. 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,[1] 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.
