” Most of his father’s visits to the forest at this time were, he noted, family expeditions on foot “to make yet another attempt to count the pine trees on Gill’s Lap or to search for the marsh gentian”.

In the center of this hilltop was a clump of pines. ” From the front lawn the family had a view across a meadow to a line of alders that fringed the River Medway, beyond which the ground rose through more trees until finally “above them, in the faraway distance, crowning the view, was a bare hilltop. And we would spend a whole glorious month there in the spring and two months in the summer. In 1925 Milne, a Londoner, bought a country home a mile to the north of the forest at Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield.Īccording to Christopher Milne, while his father continued to live in London “… he four of us-he, his wife, his son and his son’s nanny-would pile into a large blue, chauffeur-driven Fiat and travel down every Saturday morning and back again every Monday afternoon. The forest is a large area of tranquil open heathland on the highest sandy ridges of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty situated 30 miles (50 km) south of London. ” Ashdown Forest: the setting for the stories The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set in Ashdown Forest, Sussex, England. In the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne offers this explanation of why Winnie-the-Pooh is often called simply “Pooh”: “But his arms were so stiff … they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off.Īnd I think - but I am not sure - that that is why he is always called Pooh. Pooh the swan appears as a character in its own right in When We Were Very Young. “Winnie” was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot.Ĭolebourne left Winnie at the London Zoo while he and his unit were in France after the war she was officially donated to the zoo, as she had become a much loved attraction there. He named the bear “Winnie” after his hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. Harry Colebourne and Winnie, 1914Ĭhristopher Milne had named his toy bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear which he often saw at London Zoo, and “Pooh”, a swan they had met while on holiday. Christopher Robin’s toy bear is now on display at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library in New York.

Christopher’s toys also lent their names to most of the other characters, except for Owl and Rabbit, as well as the Gopher character, who was added in the Disney version. Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, who was the basis for the character Christopher Robin.

The doa of pooh