Sussex Archaeological Collections 135

Excavations in 1992 at the University of Brighton Varley Halls site, Coldean Lane, Brighton revealed part of a Bronze Age settlement. Middle Bronze Age features included hut terraces, badly truncated linear features, probably Iynchets, and a ditch which may have held a wooden palisade. Elsewhere on the site a single terrace was dated to the later Bronze Age. A crouched inhumation and the skeleton of a cow buried in a pit were dated by radiocarbon to the late Middle or Late Bronze Age. Other radiocarbon dates are correlated with ceramic studies. Detailed analysis of wood charcoal from a burnt layer provides information about exploitation of timber resources. Land mollusc analysis is related to the stratigraphic interpretation. The animal bone assemblage provides evidence for a model of meat production. Resistivity survey indicates that the settled area is more extensive than that excavated.

Excavations on the line of the A27 road identified four phases of activity: a Mesolithic flint scatter, Late Bronze Age pits, fragmentary remains of a Roman farm dated to the 2nd to 4th centuries and slight medieval remains. A study of the Bronze Age pits suggest that the site may have been 'closed down' by removing the remaining artefact spreads. Trenches cut to locate a possible arm of the Chichester Entrenchments noted on aerial photographs failed to identify any remains.

Excavations were carried out at Rocky Clump over a number of years on behalf of the Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society. Work in the wooded interior of the Clump revealed an interesting sequence stretching from Romano-British occupation to activity possibly connected with the laying out of the Park in the 18th century. Of particular interest were a substantial Roman timber structure and an overlying early-mid-Saxon cemetery.

This article brings together evidence relating to the early history of Lewes, much of which has been 'lost' for well over 100 years. It forms the basis for a re-assessment of the origins of the town.

St Cuthman, the local saint of Steyning, may have lived in the late 7th or 8th century. His Latin Life shows strong Celtic influence; it contains topographical details, including a description of the religious precinct bounded by two natural streams, and describes the building of a stave-church at Steyning. The Life locates Cuthman's birth at an unnamed place to the west; later traditions identify this as Chidham, near Bosham, where 'St Culman's field' and 'St Cullman's dell' are recorded from 1635. Bosham was an Irish monastery in the late 7th century, and it seems possible that its influence underlies the strikingly Celtic elements in the story. The Life reinforces the view that the town of Steyning originated as an important Anglo-Saxon minster, otherwise first mentioned in 858. Steyning was progressively secularized as a royal and urban centre during the 9th to 11th centuries; excavation has revealed evidence for lay settlement of this period, perhaps developing first around the religious precinct and then within it.

The history of Pevensey, its castle and its hinterland from 1066 until the end of the 13th century can conveniently be divided into three phases, punctuated by two definitive changes of lordship. The first phase lasted until 1102 when William, Count of Mortain, son of the Conqueror's half-brother Robert, forfeited Pevensey together with all his inheritance in England. In the second, much longer, phase the lords of Laigle in southern Normandy held property around Pevensey, which came to be known as the honour of Aquila or the Eagle. Their association with the area continued, despite several temporary losses of their property, ,until the family died out in the male line in 1231. The third phase, during which Pevensey was granted to a number of royal favourites, dates from the death of the last Laigle until around 1270, when the honour of the Eagle, Pevensey castle and much local property came into the possession of Henry Ill's queen, Eleanor. During all three phases it has been assumed that the history of the honour of Pevensey and of the castle are identical, but there is clear evidence that for much of this time the castle and the honour were in different hands. In each phase a major siege of the castle illustrates the continuing strategic importance of the area, and a royal grant of property around Pevensey was often an indication of particular confidence in the recipient and always an important commentary on the changing needs and capacities of English royal power.

Despite the protests of Elizabeth's foresters, human activity over a short time decisively altered the ecological system in St Leonards Forest: the indiscriminate felling of saleable timber together with the direct and indirect effects of iron mining and smelting in the 16th century virtually eliminated oak and beech and these did not reappear as the forest regenerated. This in tum had a disruptive impact on the deer population which dwindled and disappeared, leaving the area by the 19th century more or less sterile. This sequence of events appears to be merely a particular illustration of a more general trend in the forests of 16th-century England.

Sussex has been particularly well endowed with wayside chapels of which a great number survive, whether in religious use or as dwellings. The great number are Strict Baptist or Calvinistic Independent. Within Calvinism there are different affiliations and an attempt is made to identify these and relate local causes to them. Returns to the Religious Census of 1851 indicated denominational allegiance, albeit sometimes imprecisely. For example, there were 43 places of worship declared to be 'Baptist' of which some were 'open' in their communion (and have survived into the 20th century within the Baptist Union) and others, like Rotherfield, Danehill and Dicker were 'strict'. This paper relates to a listing of some 150 such chapels, the greater number of which have existed in the eastern part of the county. It includes those causes in which the baptism of believers was practised: these divide into two major alignments in the late 19th century. It also includes the Calvinistic Independent causes founded in most cases after the missionary sermons of William Huntington; these often became Baptist at a later stage.

Further evidence of Mesolithic activity near Midhurst, West Sussex; Prehistoric flintwork from the Paddockhurst estate, Worth, West Sussex; A Neolithic axe from Windover Hill; the Roman road in Burgess Hill; Fieldwork and excavation on the Robertsbridge bypass, 1985; A seal-matrix from Tarring, West Sussex: a supplementary note; Edmund Scott and Brighton College chapel: a lost work rediscovered; The Lavant Caves revisited.