Sussex Archaeological Collections 116

In these days of rapid and intensive building development our villages may seem to change their character overnight. Although planning law and the creation of conservation areas are not without effect the same may well be said of pressures due to increasing population. Consequently there is a need to protect centres of settlements of all kinds where they are of archaeological significance, and whereas most of our towns and larger villages now have thriving amenity societiesthe smaller villages tend still to be at some risk.

An area approximately 50m. south of the site of the medieval East Gate of Lewes (Fig. 1a) has been scheduled for redevelopment. Houghton's study of the property boundaries, and historic maps and drawings in relation to the standing buildings in this area, have led to the suggestion that the limit in building in the medieval period was west of the present line of Eastgate Street and Friar's Walk. To test this hypothesis, the Sussex Archaeological Field Unit carried out an excavation within the redevelopment area during June, 1976. It was planned to excavate a trench 30m. long and 3m. wide parallel to the line of the High Street. The only area of the site where this was possible proved to have a cellar occupying the eastern 9m. (Fig. 1b, trench A), and consequently an extra trench (Fig. 1b, trench B) was excavated 1.75m. north of the cellar, to complete the section. Standing buildings and buried services also complicated the layout of this excavation.

An area of 1,300 square metres was excavated inside Harting Beacon, and a section was cut through the defences. Early Iron Age pottery was found, dating to the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. Within the excavated area, 4 four-post-hole structures and one six-post-hole structure were found, plus three small pits and a circular barrow. The central burial of this barrow had been robbed out, but a Son date seems possible.

In an attempt to establish the nature of one of two oval mounds near the Neolithic causewayed enclosure at Barkhale, two trenches were dug across it. Both indicated that it was an entirely natural mound of Clay-with-Flints. As one end of the mound had been cut off to make a small round barrow, two further trenches were excavated in an inconclusive attempt to date the barrow

John Norden, the surveyor and topographer, prepared a 'Description of Sussex' in 1594-5 as part of his projected 'Speculum Britanniae'. The map which it was intended to accompany was published in 1595, but the 'Description' remained only in manuscript and is now known in a holograph fragment and in an almost complete copy of 60 or 70 years later. The background to, and the contents of, Norden's 'Description' are discussed.

Excavation at North Bersted revealed the presence of an Iron Age settlement, characterised by a series of drainage ditches forming the boundaries of approximately rectangular fields. A single circular hut, six metres in diameter, was excavated. In addition to Iron Age occupation, dated by the pottery from the third to the late first centuries B.C., artefacts from the Beaker and Mesolithic periods were found.

The Old House, Pulborough, is a 15th century single-room hall houses with a small garden in which excavation from 1966 to 1976 has yielded much ceramic material glass, clay tobacco pipes and metal objects, including decorated buttons and forger's coin mould. The pottery comprises painted ware, almost all forms of lead-glazed vessels, slipwares, stoneware and delftware. The variety and historical continuity of the finds, interesting enough in a large manor, are notable oin the context of so small a cottage.