Sussex Archaeological Collections 154

A grant from Our Heritage, a Heritage Lottery Fund scheme, facilitated a programme of archive conservation and reassessment, site improvement, archaeological investigation and community outreach at Whitehawk Camp, an early neolithic causewayed enclosure, during 2014 and 2015. Data gathered by the project indicates how the monument has deteriorated since the 19th century, due to a variety of impacts, and the extent to which these have, or have not, been archaeologically recorded. Through the experience of the project, suggestions are made as to how the site can be better protected in the future and the site improvement works carried out by the project are described. The archaeological investigations carried out by the project are then outlined and the limitations of the results of previous fieldwork and the surviving archive detailed. Through the reassessment of the site’s stratigraphic and finds archives, site formation processes and site use are addressed. The reassessment revises our understanding of the site and also its importance in the light of modern archaeological techniques and current knowledge of the British neolithic period.

Linear earthworks in Pudding Bag Wood and Stanmer Great Wood, Brighton, were sectioned to seek dating evidence prior to possible scheduling. The linear earthwork in Stanmer Great Wood is a cross-ridge dyke, while the feature in Pudding Bag Wood runs parallel with the downland ridge. The flintwork and pottery suggest a Bronze Age date for construction.

An extremely weathered marble portrait unearthed near Pulborough in 2008 is considered here in print for the first time. The find was made within an area of intensive Romano-British activity and, although the possibility of recent importation cannot be completely discounted, the likelihood is that it represents a genuine Roman portrait of the mid-3rd century AD, defaced and disposed of in antiquity.

The excavations at Castle Ditch Lane, Lewes, included the historic building assessment of a former store building and the archaeological evaluation and excavation of two adjacent plots. The site is located on the northern side of the lane, on the site of the castle ditch and bank, or rampart. Finds from the latest ditch deposits, of 15th- to 16th-century date, suggest the ditch was deliberately backfilled to the level of the lane by that period. Other features revealed include a series of inter-cutting pits which contained a range of domestic artefacts and, in one pit, the complete skeleton of a human infant. Pottery from the pits ranged in date from the 12th to the 16th century and, although not a large assemblage, is a useful addition to the ceramic sequence of the town.

The parish church of St Mary, West Chiltington (near Pulborough, West Sussex) is of considerable architectural interest: largely of the late Saxon and Norman periods, it has an added south aisle and chantry, with various notable features including an immensely long ‘squint’. Restoration in the 1880s also revealed a remarkable array of wall paintings. Neither the fabric nor the paintings have been closely studied before now. The three authors of this article approach the building from various points of view: a detailed examination of the structure; an account of the phases of the painting; an evocation of the cultural climate in which they were produced. Additionally we provide the first publication of a comprehensive set of colour photographs of them. Previous commentators have assigned them to two periods (late 12th and 13th centuries); our investigation points to a much greater periodic range.

Between 1555 and 1557, at least 27 people were burnt in Sussex as incorrigible heretics, having been passed to the secular authorities by the church. The cult of the ‘Sussex Martyrs’, revived or arguably created by the Lewes schoolteacher and historian Mark Antony Lower (1813–76), established a canonical list of the victims of such persecution, and subsequent biographical research has been largely limited to those individuals. This article seeks to broaden the investigation in order to establish a social and religious context for the burnings.

In his Introduction to the 1877 edition of Gilbert White’s classic text The natural history and antiquities of Selborne, Frank Buckland writes: ‘There is hardly a parish in England or Wales where the clergyman has not opportunities more or less favourable for writing a local “White’s Selborne”.’ The Reverend W. D. Parish (1833–1904), Vicar of Selmeston with Alciston (East Sussex) from 1863 until his death, took up the challenge by annotating his own copy of this edition of White’s work with observations of nature, life and customs around Selmeston which, like Selborne, sits within the South Downs. The annotations are chatty in style and often humorous, and give an insight into country life at the end of the 19th century, but they are not haphazard. Parish wrote an introduction giving his raison d’être for his work, and an index to his notes. The resulting book, which, re-bound in two volumes, he had had interleaved with blank pages on which he wrote his notes and added sketches and newspaper cuttings, was given to Parish’s old school, Charterhouse, soon after his death. It provides an opportunity to study an example of close reading and to observe the profound effect that a book can have on its readers. This article begins by comparing the lives of White and Parish and continues by examining and analysing the annotations.

It is not entirely clear why Kate Fowler Tutt (1868-1954) came to be remembered as the spinster schoolmistress who objected to Rodin’s sculpture, The Kiss, being placed in Lewes Town Hall in late 1914, when this venue was used for recreation by soldiers billeted in the town. This story has caused her reputation to suffer unfairly and her praiseworthy achievements in improving the lives of working families and their children to be ignored. As head of South Malling Elementary School, she was concerned primarily with the physical and moral well-being of her pupils, and moving to the Central Senior Girls’ School, Lewes, she led the Juvenile Health Crusade. The priority placed on citizenship was reflected in her work with her girls during the First World War, when her thrift campaign included the instigating of a communal kitchen. She retired from teaching to become a committed borough councillor, and as chairman of the housing committee oversaw the first stage of the building of the Nevill Estate. She was in constant demand throughout the county as an informative and entertaining lecturer, and during the 1930s promoted League of Nations ideals of international peace by participating in International Friendship League student exchanges, visiting Germany and Russia herself. During the Second World War, she did her best to ensure that the borough’s education committee provided adequately for evacuee as well as local children. Convinced that the involvement of women was essential to good government, she continued to address women’s groups and to exhort their members to play their full part in the life of the community.