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Jaime
Kaminski
Sussex Archaeological Society
Barbican House
169 High Street
Lewes
BN8 1YE
Archaeological and documentary evidence, taken together, suggests the enduring significance of a subtle downland feature on the steep southern slope of the Malling-Caburn Downs. Named 'Round-the-Down' on the 1873 Ordnance Survey map, this small rounded hill is one of the few local landforms still noted by today's cartographers. The site of an Early-Bronze-Age barrow constructed alongside prehistoric fields, it retained a distinct identity well beyond prehistoric times. Within the settlement of Southerham, throughout the rise and fall of a peasant community, it became the focal point of a common field and a network of trackways, traces of which remain today. Thus the barrow and its hill may have helped to define a landscape that remained in cultivation over four millennia.