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Weald (IPA: /wiːld/) once meant a dense forest, especially the famous great wood once stretching far beyond the ancient counties of Sussex and Kent, England, where this country now of smaller woods is still called "the Weald". Now that most large English woodlands have been broken up, the word may refer to open countryside or to the special clays found in the Weald. Weald descends via Anglo-Saxon weald meaning "forest", from an ancient Indo-European root meaning "forest" or "wild". It is closely related to the German Wald, Dutch woud and Old Norse völlr, all of which descend from the same Germanic root. The adjective for weald is wealden.

View South across the Weald of Kent as seen from the North Downs Way near Detling

The Weald is a region in the South-east of England situated between the chalk escarpments of the North Downs and the South Downs. It extends from the eastern edge of Hampshire across much of the counties of Surrey, West Sussex, East Sussex and Kent – about 135 km (85 miles) from west to east, and about 50 km (30 miles) from north to south, covering an area of some 1,300 km² (500 square miles).

The Weald is especially popular with ramblers, cyclists and other recreational users. Despite the population pressure in the South of England, there is limited urban development. Towns such as Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Crawley, Sevenoaks, Crowborough etc are local centres which have attracted a certain number of commuters into London while often retaining their traditional character. There are some larger towns around the edges of the Weald, including Guildford, Maidstone and Ashford.

Gatwick, London's second airport, lies close to the centre of the Weald, near Crawley. The M25, M26 and M20 motorways run along or near the northern edge of the Weald, and the M23 bisects it from north to south. Railway lines connect the major towns of the south coast and the Weald with London to the north.

Parts of the Weald have been included in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONBs), including the Surrey Hills AONB and especially the High Weald AONB.

The Weald is drained by rivers radiating from its centre, most of which escape the low-lying Low Weald by cutting deeply through the surrounding high ridges of the North Downs and South Downs. These rivers are (clockwise from the north-west): the Wey, Mole, Darent, Medway (the largest), Stour, Rother, Cuckmere, Ouse, Adur and Arun. The complex topography has led to many river captures.

Geology of South East England. The Wealden rocks are in shades of darker green, numbered 8, 9 and 9a.

Geological section from north to south.

The Weald is the eroded remains of a geological structure called an anticline, a dome of layered Lower Cretaceous rocks cut through by weathering to expose the layers as sandstone ridges and clay valleys.

The rocks of the central part of the anticline include hard sandstones, and these form hills called the High Weald. The peripheral areas are mostly of softer sandstones and clays and form a gentler rolling countryside, the Low Weald. The Weald-Artois Anticline continues some 65 km (40 miles) further south-eastwards under the Straits of Dover, and includes the Boulonnais of France.

Many important fossils have been found in the sandstones and clays of the Weald, including for example Baryonyx.

The famous scientific hoax of Piltdown Man was claimed to have come from a gravel pit at Piltdown near Lewes.

The Weald has largely maintained its wooded character, with woodland still covering 23% of the overall area (one of the highest levels in England) and the proportion is considerably higher in some central parts. The sandstones of the Wealden rocks are usually acidic, often leading to the development of acidic habitats such as heathland, the largest remaining areas of which are in Ashdown Forest and near Thursley.

The Weald consists largely of farmland composed of pasture fields separated by strips of woodland (shaws) or larger woods. There is much scattered housing, often occupied by commuters working in London, Brighton, Crawley and other centres within and near the Weald. Significant areas of land are used for recreation, including golf courses and extensive areas of publicly-owned woodland and heathland.

In early Anglo-Saxon times, the Weald was said to have been 190 km (120 miles) long^{[citation needed]}. In the early Middle Ages, the Weald was known as the Forest of Andred or Andredswald, and it then stretched from Andred or Anderitum (Pevensey Castle) in East Sussex to the Dorset-Hampshire border – thus including what is now the New Forest.

Many Wealden sandstones contain ironstone, and with the presence of large amounts of timber for making charcoal fuel the area was the centre of the Wealden iron industry from Roman times until the last forge was closed in 1820^{[citation needed]}. The timber was also used for the medieval cloth industry and by shipbuilders on the Thames and Medway, as well as for charcoal for other uses such as making gunpowder. The use of its timber for these industries might well have denuded its landscape, but coal replaced charcoal for most industrial uses, and the Weald has remained one of the most heavily wooded areas of England.

Permanent settlements in much of the Weald developed much later than in other parts of lowland Britain, with many settlements in the central part dating from no earlier than the 16th century^{[citation needed]}. Before this time, the Weald was used as summer grazing land by communities living on the drier surrounding areas. Many places within the Weald have retained names from this time, linking them to the original communities by the addition of the suffix "-den" – for example Tenterden was the area used by the people of Thanet.

Many settlements in the Weald grew up on hilltops, rather than on river crossings or springlines as is more usual in lowland England, perhaps because of previous land use or ownership. These include, for example, Tunbridge Wells, Crowborough, Hindhead and Burwash.

The Weald has been associated with many artists and writers, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Notable examples include John Evelyn, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, H G Wells and Rudyard Kipling.

Kipling's book Puck of Pook's Hill is set around Pevensey in the southern part of the Weald.

Cold Comfort Farm, the comic novel by Stella Gibbons was set in the fictional Sussex village of Howling which may have been in the Weald.

The game of cricket may have originated prior to the 13th century in the Weald (see History of English cricket to 1696).

Several other areas in southern England have the name Weald, but are outside "the" Weald as described above. These include North Weald Bassett in Essex, and Harrow Weald in northwest London.

Wold, which is from the same root as weald, also originally meant "forest" or "wildlands." It now most often means open countryside or moorlands and especially the rolling uplands in the North of England, the Yorkshire Wolds and Lincolnshire Wolds.

• High Weald
• Map of heritage locations
• National Association of AONBs