THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
XXIII.-SUSSEX AND SOUTH SURREY.---KELTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS.
THE population by which this Province was inhabited when the Romans first became acquainted with it, appears to have been a Keltic race of much the same character as that which dwelt in the adjoining districts of Hampshire. They are variously called BELGIE or REGNI, the former being perhaps their generic and the latter their specific name ; or the first name may have been sug- gested by some resemblance observed by the Romans to the Belgic tribes on the Continent of Europe, and the latter name by some local peculiarity or native nomenclature which it is now impossible to trace. It is not improbable that the special epithet Regni was applied not only to the inhabitants of Sussex and South Surrey, but also to the occupants of the sea-coast district of Hampshire.
The certain Keltic remains in the Province are confined to barrows or tombs, with which the Downs are dotted, and of which several may be safely referred to the British period. Respecting the camps or entrenchments which cover the South Downs, it is not easy to determine how many are to be assigned to the British and how many to the Roman period, the probability being that most of them owe their origin to the latter people. "The more important are Cissbury, near Findon, Chanctonbury, near Steyning, Whitehawk Hill, near Brighton, the Devil's Dyke, near roynings, and Mount Caburn, near Lewes." Beyond this all is but doubtful inference. Thus, in the irregularities in the slopes and valleys of the Downs between Beachy Head and the Hampshire frontier, some antiquarians have recognized traces of the foundations of British towns and villages, and in corrobora- tion of this opinion they point to "numerous vestiges of beads, combs, cells, and amulets of the earliest date, which have been obtained from their sites or vicinities." Some, again, find traces of the principal towns among the Britons "on the extremity of points nearly surrounded by water, and oftentimes defended on the land side by a vallum and ditch. Of these," they maintain, "there are several projecting from the Downs." The town of Lewes they particularize as one. "From the west a tongue of land, protrud- ing from the Downs, stretches eastward to the low ground on which the suburb of the Cliffe is built, but which in earlier periods was covered with the waters of the sea, or formed a vast morass, extending from the embouchure of the Ouse to Hamsey, or perhaps to Barcombe, and bounded to the east and west by the upland country. The base of this projecting land was surrounded by water, except to the west, where were," they say, "doubtless entrenchments, identical in some degree with the locality of the town walls." They find another example in the site of the town of Arundel. "On the south side of the town, a portion of high land projects into the valley, through which the river Arun now flows, and which in these early times was a morass. On each side of this tongue of land a deep valley runs, in which are copious springs of water, and which communicated with the morass. From thence a dry ditch, with a vallum on the inside upwards of sixty feet in height, defends it from the land side. Within this area, with the water on the east, south, and west, and the vallum on
the north, is included a small paddock, and the whole of the castle and present town. On the opposite side of the river from • Arundel, in the parish of Burpham, whence the name of Burpham is
• derived, is another projection of land of smaller dimensions, but equally defined, three sides of which are or were surrounded by water, and the fourth protected on the laud aide by a ditch and vellum, higher and more precipitous than Arundel." A third example is found by them in the Castle of Bramber.
Be this as it may, there is a more general agreement among
Roman city which lies underneath the present CHICHESTER, and which is believed to be identical with the REGNUM of the Itineraries.
The first expeditions of the Romans to Britain under Julius Cmsar make no reference which we can connect with the territory of the Regni. The great Wood of Auderida would nearly shut them off from the observation of the great Roman General, who seems to have landed on the coast of Kent, and to have marched directly inland, rather than westward along the coast. Tacitus, in his Agricola, speaks of the little co-operation that there was between the different States into which Britain was divided, and we need not be surprised if the Regni viewed with indifference an expedition which immediately affected their neighbours and rivals alone. The effects of those first expeditions were very transient, so far as actual conquest by arms was concerned, but Britain seems to have been from that time drawn closer and closer to Rome, and not a little of Roman ideas and civilization crept into the island between the first era and the more permanent conquests in the reign of Claudius. If, as the epitome of the last books of Livy seems to intimate, Augustus actually set foot in Britain, there must have been friendly relations betwen the mistress of the civilized world and this outermost land. The sway of the British Cunobelin, whose coins attest the use made by the Britons of this intercourse with a more civilized nation, may have united much of the South of the island under one royalty, and the Regni may, among others, have owned his sway. If so, it would be natural enough that they should seek the alliance and protection of Rome, when the sons of Cunobelin came into collision with the forces of the Empire. Antiquaries seem agreed in placing among the Regni the King Cogidubnus, whom Tacitus mentions as the faithful ally of the Romans in this struggle down to his own time, and as rewarded for becoming an instrument in the subjugation of Britain with the grant of some civitates. This opinion was prevalent before the discovery in the buried Roman city which underlies Chichester of an inscription which is believed to render the hypothesis certain. But the imperfection of the inscription must always render any such positive deduction very rash. The inscription clearly refers to a Temple of Neptune and Minerva, the word " auctoritat" also appears placed after a slight break by the word " Claud ;" then a rather longer break is followed by the words " gidubni r. leg. Aug. in Brit." The rest of the inscription seems to indicate that the build- ing was erected by the Company (collegium) of Carpenters or Shipbuilders (fabrorum), on ground the gift of the son of Puden- tius. It has been inferred that this termination gidubni belongs to the name Cogidubni, and that we should read the words which follow—" Regis legati Augusti in Britannia "—and connect with Cogidubnus the name Claudius, as taken on his becoming a client of the Emperor. This may be so, but it is rather plausible guess- work than evidence. We pass over as equally speculative the conjectural identifications with the Claudia and Pudens of Martial and St. Paul.
But whatever doubts may rest on these points, there can be none as to the firm footing which the Romans obtained in the extreme south of this Province. Of course the memorials of the Roman period lie almost all of them beyond the area of the great forest, or on its outskirts. Beginning at Chichester, probably the ancient REGNUM, "mosaic pavements, coins, and urns occur beneath the surface in all directions. In the graveyard of St. Andrew's Church, in East Street, the coffins are laid on an ancient tesselated floor. The walls of the Church of St. Olave, in North Street, were found on its restoration full of Roman tile ; and in this street also was discovered in 1720" the inscription to which we have already referred, which is now preserved at Goodwood. Several other inscriptions have been discovered, which all refer the existence of the Roman city to the earliest period of the Roman occupation of Britain. "Not quite a mile north of the walls on the Goodwood road are some remarkable lines of entrenchment, now called the Broyle," perhaps from bruilhtm—coppice. The lines extend for a considerable dis- tance north and west, but have never been thoroughly examined."
They not improbably mark the site of an entrenched military
station outside the walls, perhaps of one of the fortified posts which we know extended along the Saxon Shore or March, in the later Roman period. "A somewhat similar work, ealledRedvin's Cop, runs east of Goodwood." About half-way between Arundel and Petworth, in the lowest slope of the north descent of the
Downs, at Bignor, have been discovered some most interesting remains of a Roman villa. "The colonnades of its principal rooms opened towards the south-west," so as to receive the full warmth of the sun, and looked directly into the heart of "the antiquaries in fixing the capital of the Regni on the site of a , green hills," the other aspect of the villa being towards the glades of the great forest. From this point, at some early period, perhaps the later Roman or earlier Saxon, a roadway, "Stane Street," pierced the forest in the direct line to London. The fields in which these remains lie had always been known by the names of the Berry and the Town Fields, and there was a tradition that the old town of Bignor formerly stood in the latter field. The villa "buildings have been traced to an extent of about 600 feet in length by nearly 350 feet in breadth. The principal household buildings formed about one-half that length. They stood round an inner court, which was nearly a rectangular parallelogram. The chief apartments were on the north-east side of this court, and opened into a crypto-porticus, or ambulatory, surrounding the court, at the south-west corner of which were baths and suda- tories." One of the pavements "exhibits combats of Cupids habited as gladiators." Four different scenes are represented, giving the different stages of the combat. "The north end of this pavement has a semicircular division, within which is a female head, orna- mented with a chaplet of flowers, and surrounded by a nimbus of a light blue colour." It is disputed whether this is intended as a representation of Venus or of Juno. "Although the great size of the villa evidently marks it as having been that of one of the chief functionaries of the Regnian province, the mosaics in point of execution cannot be compared to those of Connsfuss (Ciren- cester), or of Woodbourne, in Gloucestershire. The work is much rougher, and the materials used are not so rich. There are no lessens of coloured glass, as at Corinium." It is true "at Signor Park is preserved a gold ring, found near the villa, one of the finest examples of Roman art in precious metals which has been dis- covered in Britain. The work is chased and set with an intaglio, representing the figure of a warrior holding a buckler before him." But this personal and transferable article cannot be admitted as counter-evidence to the testimony borne by the villa itself to the inferior advancement in civilization of this part of Roman Britain to the favoured district of the "West Downs and the Valley of the Severn." Remains of Roman villas, but of much less importance, have also been found at Angtnering, Lanc- ing, Seaford, Eastbourne, and Bognor, on the coast, and at Hurst- pierpoint.
Among the most interesting relies, however, of the Roman period in this Province are the remains of the fortress city of ANDERIDA, which after a long and hot dispute among anti- quarians are now generally identified with Pevensey Castle, to the north-east of Beachy Head. What is now called the Castle "consists of two entirely distinct parts, an outer wall or enclo- sure, and the mediseval castle itself. The outer wall is certainly Roman, exhibiting the usual arrangement of Roman masonry, a casing of neatly squared stones, fitted in with well cemented flints, bonded together at intervals by courses of broad, well baked, red tiles. This wall is studded at intervals by nine round towers ; not cylinders, but solid drums of well cemented stone-work." Entering, you find yourself within the walls of the ancient city of ANDERIDA, one of the fortresses of the Comes of the Saxon Shore, "an irregular oval or parallelogram of three sides. The fourth side was originally washed by the tide, and thus suf- ficiently protected had no wall. On this side ran a quay, at which vessels could moor, although at present the sea has retired several miles from the terrace, and the intermediate space is filled up by the silting of the waves and the deposits of numerous streams. The Roman towns of Richborough, near Sandwich, Burgh, near Yarmouth, and Castor were all built on the same plan of three sides of a square or parallelogram, and have all been deserted by the sea."
Such are some of the footprints left by the Romans in the southern part of this Province. If we include within it, as we properly should, the neighbourhood of the present town of Farn- ham and the immediate vicinity of the North Downs, we have here again traces of the Romans along the north outskirts of the old forest. Foundations and pavements of more than one Roman villa have been discovered in this neighbourhood. At Crondale, about four miles north-west of Farnham, some fine mosaic pave- ments and Roman coins have been found ; and about 100 Merovin- gian gold coins were discovered on a heath here in 1828, near an earth-work called (like most other entrenchments in that dis- trict) Cmar's Camp." It is possible that in this neighbourhood may be the site of the CALLEVA ATREBATIIM of one of the hers, which we are disposed to believe was a distinct place from the CALLEVA of other hers, which we incline to identify with Sikhester, and to connect with the Segontiaei. One learned antiquary has placed the site of Vim:foam at Farnham, but we think the identification with Calleva of the Atrebatians as more probable. If we are correct, this was one of the stages of the Roman road leading from REGNIIM to LO.NDINIII7A, which certainly went to the neighbourhood of Southampton (to Csessi- SENTUM) and thence to YENTA. BELGARCTII (Winchester), from which city it passed to its destination with two intervening stages, CALLEVA ATREBATIMI and PONTES, which last station we should incline to place between Weybridge (the passage over the Wey) and Cowey Stakes (that over the Thames), at which latter place there are the tradition and alleged relies of a former bridge. Remains of Roman encampments are also found on Holmbury Hill, in the parish of Oakley, and elsewhere along this line ; and on Blackheath, in the parish of Albury, was found a platform which some suppose to have belonged to a Roman temple. In Aubrey's time the walls of the edifice were as high as the banks by which it was surrounded, but in 1670 it was dug up for the sake of the stone and brick, and Aubrey informs us that many Roman tiles of a pretty kind of moulding, some with eight angles, as well as many Roman coins, were found hereabouts. Other antiquaries speak of similar relics as being dug out on this spot, and describe the general character of the remains in their time. Near Guildford there seem to be remains of an old road, which is believed by antiquaries to be the continuation of Slane Street, the first direct road from Chichester to London.
Previous page
