The battle to keep AA Milne’s Poohsticks bridge in Britain
The provenance of the iconic structure may be in debate, but the attraction of playing like Christopher Robin and his bear of very little brain is endless,
Awise bear once said: “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” It’s a sentiment that certainly resonates this week, as an endangered little bridge in a corner of East Sussex has received an outpouring of support and affection.
This week The Telegraph reported that the aristocratic owner of the original Poohsticks Bridge may be putting it up for sale, likely to a foreign bidder, just 18 months after he bought it for £131,000.
In the late 1920s AA Milne and his son, Christopher, often crossed this bridge near their East Sussex home at Cotchfield Farm, and it was here they came up with a simple but very entertaining game involving a stick, gravity and the current of Pippingford Brook below. Poohsticks would go on to make its first appearance in The House at Pooh Corner.
“Bother,” Pooh says, as he accidentally drops a pine cone into a river, before seeing it bob beneath the bridge to the other side.
The crossing, originally Posingford Bridge, was built in 1907 and for many years attracted the level of attention that a bridge in a remote tract of woodland would expect. However, the bridge became increasingly popular following the publication of the Winnie the Pooh books and, under the weight of a thousand tiny footsteps, eventually fell into a state of disrepair. When the ribbon was cut for a sturdier replica in 1999, the remains of the original were quietly taken to the safety of dry land.
When the original Poohsticks Bridge came up for auction in October 2021, Lord William De La Warr was a perfect fit. He owns the 2,000-acre Buckhurst Park estate in East Sussex, which incorporates Five Hundred Acre Wood, the inspiration for One Hundred Acre Wood in the Pooh stories. De La Warr’s father was also good friends with Christopher Robin Milne, and they used to play Poohsticks off the sides of this very bridge.
“I felt it was appropriate that this historic bridge came back to where in the book it was located,” De La Warr told me, adding that his motivations for buying the bridge in 2021 were “largely sentimental”. While the bridge stands incongruously away from any water on his private estate, his plans were to move the bridge to Five Hundred Acre Wood and to make it open to the public for free. However, with a change in financial circumstances, De La Warr said he has no option but to crowdfund or sell the bridge. If the latter, he believes it would almost certainly go to a foreign bidder at auction.
“I know that [in 2021] bidders number two, three, four, five and six were all from overseas,” he said.
An American was the second highest bidder, and there was also interest from a Bulgarian business owner who wanted to install the bridge at his hotel.
Some have suggested that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion, since the perfectly functional replica today stands at the exact spot that inspired Milne’s books. The Poohsticks Bridge saga, I discovered on my recent visit to Ashdown Forest, is a tad more complicated than the rules of the game.
“The Poohsticks bridge that Lord De La Warr bought is not thought to be the original bridge,” said Neil Reed from Pooh Corner, the nearby gift shop and tea house. “It’s the second or third bridge that stemmed the waterway. It may have a piece or two of wood from the original, but it is certainly not the original bridge that was built in 1907.” Lord De La Warr said: “The way we see it here is that the bridge that has been at the site since the 1990s is now ‘the’ Poohsticks Bridge for current generations. For Poohsticks Bridge is as much about the location as it is about the magic of the bridge itself.”
If the older Poohsticks Bridge were to be sold to an overseas bidder, it wouldn’t be the first tourist attraction to be forever replaced with a replica. In 1970, a concrete copy of the St John’s Cross replaced the 8th-century original on the Hebridean island of Iona.
The Checkpoint Charlie you can visit today in Berlin is not the original. Visit the Lascaux Caves in France and you will find a full-scale copy, while the real stone-age carvings are safe and sound in a cave nearby.
“Replicas can ‘work’ for us if we let them,” said Sally Foster, Professor of Heritage and Conservation at the University of Stirling. “There is undeniably something particularly evocative about experiencing replicas in atmospheric places at, or close to, where the historic original once stood.”
It was an interesting thought, and one I wanted to investigate for myself. Parking at the aptly named Pooh Car Park on the fringes of Ashdown Forest I walked for 10 minutes to seek out the bridge. This wasn’t my first visit. My late grandparents lived just around the corner on the outskirts of Crowborough, and if conditions weren’t right for kite-flying on the High Weald heathland they would take me and my brothers for a round of Poohsticks. We weren’t allowed to watch the television version of Winnie the Pooh at their house as they didn’t get on with the American accents being used for British characters. But why would we want to watch that, anyway, when the real characters lived just down the road?
On the walk to the bridge I spotted Owl’s House halfway up a tall tree, and Piglet’s House appeared a little further along the path in the roots of a great trunk, marked by a tiny red door. And then the main attraction: a simple bridge across a babbling brook that was in no hurry at all.
With birds larking and no human sound pollution whatsoever, there’s quiet storybook magic to this place. You’re in wet woodland here, meaning the towering alder and birch trees wade in waterlogged pools. I didn’t see another soul until a finely dressed couple approached on horseback from the direction of Cotchfield Farm and trotted across the bridge with a “hello” – a moment that could almost be lifted from the page. Soon after a mother arrived with her son and dog, and they got to work scouring the forest floor for twigs that had dropped down from the trees (snapping them off branches, a sign politely instructed, is not allowed). It’s not always this peaceful, of course. In warmer months it’s a popular spot with families, and local volunteers have to clear the riverbed of sticks so the water flows freely.
With a Poohsticks Bridge already in situ, and a charming Pooh trail surrounding it, you might question whether the Ashdown Forest area really needs another bridge dedicated to the game. Wouldn’t it get confusing, having the original Poohsticks Bridge built in “the” Hundred Acre Wood, when there is an existing and very popular Poohsticks Bridge replica a mile or two down the road in “the” spot where it was first played by Milne and his son?
“Anything original has much more historic value than a replica – it’s precious, like a historic monument,” Lord De La Warr said, with almost Pooh-esque wisdom, but with a hint of regret given the circumstances. It’s hard to deny it would be a great shame if the bridge does end up on an Arizonan ranch or in a Bulgarian hotel.
Before I left Poohsticks Bridge I saw that the mother and her toddler had successfully found two sticks, the little one clutching his twig with a tight fist and a face full of excitement. They dropped them off one side, and then hurried to see the sticks floating below. Perhaps this little boy will play Poohsticks with his own grandchildren in Ashdown Forest in the future, I thought.
Possibly at this very spot, or perhaps on the rickety version a mile down the road (if it is, indeed, saved), or maybe it’ll be a different bridge entirely. Because while wood will rot and bridges will come and go, this simple game – and the wisdom of Pooh – will never grow old.
‘In 2021 when the bridge was auctioned, bidders 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were all from overseas’
Getting there: more information on the area can be found at ashdownforest.org, including a list of walks in the area. The nearest train stations are Sheffield Park and Horsted Keynes