long cretaceous horns or projections run out to eastward towards the
Channel and the German Sea. These two horns, separated by the deep
valley of the Weald, are known as the North and South Downs
respectively. The first great spur or ridge passes through the heart of
Surrey, and then forms the backbone of Kent, expanding into a fan at
its eastward extremity, where it topples over abruptly into the sea in
the sheer bluffs which sweep round in a huge arc from the North
Foreland in the Isle of Thanet, to Shakespeare's Cliff at Dover. The
second or southernmost range, that of the South Downs, parts company
from the main boss in Hampshire, and runs eastward in a narrower but
bolder line, till the Channel cuts short its progress in the water-worn
precipice of Beachy Head. Between these two ranges of Downs lies the
low forest region of the Weald, and between the South Downs and the sea
stretches a long but very narrow strip of lowland, beginning at
Chichester, and ending where the chalk cliffs first meet the shore
beside the new Aquarium and Chain Pier at Brighton. Thus the whole of
Sussex consists of three well-marked parallel belts: the low coast-line
on the south-west, the high chalk Downs in the centre, and the Weald
district on the north and north-west. As these three belts determine
the whole history and very existence of Sussex as an English shire, I
shall make no apology for treating their origin here in some rapid
detail.
The oldest geological formation with which we have to deal in Sussex
(to any considerable extent) is the Wealden: so that our inquiry need
not go any farther back in the history of the world than the later
secondary ages. Before that time, and for long æons afterward, the
portion of the earth's crust which now forms Sussex had probably never
emerged from the ocean. Britain was then wholly represented by the
primary regions of Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall, forming a small
archipelago or group of rocky islands separated at some distance by a
wide passage from the nucleus of the young European continent. But by
the Wealden period, the English Channel and the Eastern half of England
had been considerably elevated above the level of the sea. Great rivers
and lakes existed in this new continental region, much like those which
now exist in Sweden, Northern Russia, and Canada; and the deposits of
sand or mud formed at their bottoms or in their estuaries compose the
chief part of the Wealden formation in England. Without going fully
into this question (somewhat complicated by frequent changes of level),
it will suffice for our present purpose to say that the Wealden
consists, in the main, of two great divisions, which form, so to speak,
the floor, or lowest story, of the Sussex formations. The first or
bottom division is chiefly composed of a rather soft and friable
sandstone, which runs through the whole Forest Ridges, and crops out in
the grey cliffs of Hastings and Fairlight. The second or upper division
is chiefly composed of a thick greasy clay, which forms the soil in the
greater part of the Weald, and glides unobtrusively under the sea in
the flat shore on either side of Hastings, giving rise to the lowlands
of Pevensey Bay and the Romney Marshes. Why the sandstone, which is
really the bottom layer, should appear higher than the clay in these
places, we shall see a little later.
After the deposition of the gritty or muddy Wealden beds in the lake
and _embouchure_ of the old continental river, there came a second
period of considerable depression, during which the whole of
south-eastern England was once more covered by a shallow sea. This sea
ran, like an early northern Mediterranean, right across the face of
Central Europe; and on its bottom was deposited the soft ooze of
globigerina shells and siliceous sponge skeletons which has now
hardened into chalk and flint. A great cretaceous sheet thus overlay
the Wealden beds and the whole face of Sussex to a depth of at least
600 feet; and if it had not been afterwards worn off in places, as the
nursery rhyme says of old Pillicock, it would be there still. I need
hardly say that the chalk is yet _en évidence_ along the whole range of
South Downs, and forms the tall white cliffs between Brighton and
Beachy Head.
Finally, during the Tertiary period, another layer of London clay and
other soft deposits was spread over the top of the chalk, certainly on
the strip between the South Downs and the sea, and probably over the
whole district between the Channel and the Thames valley: though in
this case, later denudation has proceeded so far that very few traces
of the Tertiary formations are preserved anywhere except in the greater
hollows.
Such being the original disposition of the strata which compose Sussex,
we have next to ask, What are the causes which have produced its
existing configuration? If the whole mass had merely been uplifted
straight out of the sea, we ought now to find the whole country a flat
and level table-land, covered over its entire surface with a uniform
coat of Tertiary deposits. On digging or boring below these, we ought
to come upon the chalk, and below the chalk again, with its cretaceous
congeners the greensand or the gault, we ought to meet the Weald clay
and the Hastings sand. Wherever a seaward cliff exhibited a section for
our observation, we ought to find these same strata all exposed in
regular order--the sandstone at the bottom, the clay above it, the
broad belt of chalk halfway up, and the Tertiary muds and rubbles at
the top. But in the county as we actually find it, we get a very
different state of things. Here, the surface at sea-level is composed
of London clay; there, a great mound of chalk rises into a swelling
down; and yonder, once more, a steep escarpment leads us down into a
broad lowland of the Weald. The causes which have led to this
arrangement of surface and conformation must now be considered with
necessary brevity.
The North and South Downs, with all the country between them, form part
of a great fold or outward bulge of the strata above enumerated, having
its centre about the middle line of the Forest Ridge. Imagine these
strata bent or pushed upward by an internal upheaving force acting
along that line, and you will get a rough picture of the original
circumstances which have led to the existing arrangement of the county.
You would then have, instead of a flat table-land, as supposed above, a
great curved mountain slope, with its centre on top of the Forest
Ridge. This gentle slope would rise from the sea between Chichester and
a point south of Beachy, would swell slowly upward till it reached a
height of two or three thousand feet at the Surrey border, and would
fall again gradually towards the Thames valley at London. On the
southern side of the Downs this is pretty much what we now get, the
Tertiary strata being preserved in the district near Chichester; though
farther east, around Newhaven and Beachy Head, the sea has encroached
upon the chalk so as to cut out the great white cliffs which bound the
view everywhere along the shore from Brighton to Eastbourne. In the
central portion of the boss, however, almost all the highest elevated
part has been denuded by ice or water action. Between the North and
South Downs, where we ought to find the mountain ridge, we find instead
the valley of the Weald. Here the chalk has been quite worn away,
giving rise to the steep escarpment on the northern side of the South
Downs, seen from the Devil's Dyke, so that at the foot of the sudden
descent we get the Weald clay exposed; while in the very centre of the
upheaved tract the clay itself has been cut through, and the Hastings
sand appears upon the surface. Moreover, the sand, being upraised by
the central force, stands higher than the clay on either side, which
forms the trough of the Weald; and thus the forest ridge, which abuts
upon the sea in the cliffs of Hastings Castle, seems to lie above the
clay, under which, however, it really glides on either side. I need
hardly add that this rough diagrammatic description is only meant as a
general indication of the facts, and that it considerably simplifies
the real geological changes probably involved in the sculpture of
Sussex. Nevertheless, I believe it pretty accurately represents the
main formative points in the ante-human history of the county.
So much by way of preface or introduction. These facts of structure
form the data for the reconstruction of the Sussex annals during the
human period. Upon them as framework all the subsequent development of
the county hangs. And first let us observe how, before the advent of
man upon the scene, the shire was already strictly demarcated by its
natural boundaries. Along the coast, between Chichester Harbour and
Brighton, stretched a long, narrow, level strip of clay and alluvium,
suitable for the dwelling-place of an agricultural people. Back of this
coastwise belt lay the bare rounded range of the South Downs--good
grazing land for sheep, but naturally incapable of cultivation. Two
rivers, however, flowed in deep valleys through the Downs, and their
basins, with the outlying combes and glens, were also the predestined
seats of agricultural communities. The one was the Ouse, passing
through the fertile country around Lewes, and falling at last into the
English Channel at Seaford, not as now at Newhaven; the other was the
Cuckmere river, which has cut itself a deep glen in the chalk hills
just beneath the high cliffs of Beachy Head. Beyond the Downs again, to
the north, the country descended abruptly to the deep trough of the
Weald, whose cold and sticky clays or porous sandstones are never of
any use for purposes of tillage. Hence, as its very name tells us, the
Weald has always been a wild and wood-clad region. The Romans knew it
as the Silva Anderida, or forest of Pevensey; the early English as the
Andredesweald. Both names are derived from a Celtic root signifying
'The Uninhabited.' Even in our own day, a large part of this tract is
covered by the woodlands of Tolgate Forest, St. Leonard's Forest, and
Ashdown Forest; while the remainder is only very scantily laid down in
pasture-land or hop-fields, with a considerable sprinkling of copses,
woods, commons, and parks. From its very nature, indeed, the Weald can
never be anything else, in its greater portion, than a wild,
uncultivated, and wooded region.
Let us note, too, how the really habitable strip of Sussex, from the
point of view of an early people, was quite naturally cut off from all
other parts of England by obvious limits. This habitable strip
consists, of course, of the coastwise belt from Brighton to the
Hampshire border (which belt I shall henceforward take the liberty of
designating as Sussex Proper), together with the seaward valleys and
combes of the South Downs. To the west, the great tidal flats and
swamps about Hayling Island cut off Sussex from Hampshire; and before
drainage and reclamation had done their work, these marshy districts
must have formed a most impassable frontier. From this point, the great
woodland region of the Weald, thickly covered with primæval forest, and
tenanted by wolves, bears, wild boars, and red deer, swept round in a
long curve from the swamps at Bosham and Havant to the corresponding
swamps of the opposite end at Pevensey and Hurstmonceux. The belt of
savage wooded country, thick with the lairs of wild beasts, which thus
ringed round the greater part of the county, shut off the coastwise
strip at once from all possibility of communication with the rest of
England. So Sussex Proper and the combes of the Downs were naturally
predestined to form a single Celtic kingdom, a single Saxon
principality, and a single English shire.
It will be observed that this description leaves wholly out of
consideration the strip of country about Hastings, Rye, and Winchelsea.
It does so intentionally. That strip of country does not belong to
Sussex in the same intimate and strictly necessary manner as the rest
of the county. It probably once formed the seat of a small independent
community by itself; and though there were good and obvious reasons why
it should become finally united to Sussex rather than to Kent, it may
be regarded as to some extent a debateable island between them. For an
island it practically was in early times. At Pevensey Bay the Weald ran
down into the sea by a series of swamps and bogs still artificially
drained by dykes and sluices. On the other side, the Romney marshes
formed a similar though wider stretch of tidal flats, reclaimed and
drained at a far later period, partly through the agency of the long
shingle bank thrown up round the low modern spit of Dungeness. Between
them, the Hastings cliffs rose high above marsh and sea. In their rear,
the Weald forest covered the ridge; so that the Hastings district
(still a separate rape or division of the county) formed a sort of
smaller Sussex, divided, like the larger one, from all the rest of
England by a semicircular belt of marsh, forest, and marsh once more.
These are the main elements out of which the history of the county is
made up.
How far such conditions may have acted upon the very earliest human
inhabitants of Sussex--the palæolithic savages of the drift--before the
last Glacial epoch, it is impossible to say, because we know that many
of them did not then exist, and that the present configuration of the
county is largely due to subsequent agencies. Britain was then united
to the continent by a broad belt of land, filling up the bed of the
English Channel, and it possessed a climate wholly different from that
of the present day; while the position of the drift and the river
gravels shows that the sculpture of the surface was then in many
respects unlike the existing distribution of hill and valley. We must
confine ourselves, therefore, to the later or recent period (subsequent
to the last glaciation of Britain), during which man has employed
implements of polished stone, of bronze, and of iron.
The Euskarian neolithic population of Britain--a dark white race, like
the modern Basques--had settlements in Sussex, at least in the coast
district between the Downs and the sea. Here they could obtain in
abundance the flints for the manufacture of their polished stone
hatchets; while on the alluvial lowlands of Selsea and Shoreham they
could grow those cereals upon which they largely depended for their
daily bread. Neolithic monuments, indeed, are common along the range of
the South Downs, as they are also on the main mass of the chalk in
Salisbury Plain; and at Cissbury Hill, near Worthing, we have remains
of one of the largest neolithic camp refuges in Britain. The evidence
of tumuli and weapons goes to show that the Euskarian people of Sussex
occupied the coast belt and the combes of the Downs from the Chichester
marshland to Pevensey, but that they did not spread at all into the
Weald. In fact, it is most probable that at this early period Sussex
was divided into several little tribes or chieftainships, each of which
had its own clearing in the lowland cut laboriously out of the forest
by the aid of its stone axes; while in the centre stood the compact
village of wooden huts, surrounded by a stockade, and girt without by
the small cultivated plots of the villagers. On the Downs above rose
the camp or refuge of the tribe--an earthwork rudely constructed in
accordance with the natural lines of the hills--to which the whole body
of people, with their women, children, and cattle, retreated in case of
hostile invasion from the villagers on either side. It is not likely
that any foreigners from beyond the great forest belt of the Weald
would ever come on the war-trail across that dangerous and trackless
wilderness; and it is probable, therefore, that the camps or refuges
were constructed as places of retreat for the tribes against their
immediate neighbours, rather than against alien intruders from without.
Hence we may reasonably conclude--as indeed is natural at such an early
stage of civilisation--that the whole district was not yet consolidated
under a single rule, but that each village still remained independent,
and liable to be engaged in hostilities with all others. Even if
extended chieftainships over several villages had already been set up,
as is perhaps implied by the great tumuli of chiefs and the size of the
camps in some parts of Britain, we must suppose them to have been
confined for the most part to a single river valley. If so, there may
have been petty Euskarian principalities, rude supremacies or
chieftainships like those of South Africa, in the Chichester lowlands,
in the dale of Arun, in the valleys of the Adur, the Ouse, and the
Cuckmere River, and perhaps, too, in the insulated Hastings region,
between the Pevensey levels and the Romney marsh. These principalities
would then roughly coincide with the modern rapes of Chichester,
Arundel, Bramber, Lewes, Pevensey, and Hastings. Each would possess its
own group of villages, and tilled lowland, its own boundary of forest,
and its own camp of refuge on the hill-tops. Cissbury almost
undoubtedly formed such a camp for the fertile valley of the Adur and
the coast strip from Worthing to Brighton. On its summit has been
discovered an actual manufactory of stone implements from the copious
material supplied by the flint veins in the chalk of which it is
composed.
Such a society, left to itself in Sussex, could never have got much
further than this. It could not discover or use metals, when it had no
metal in its soil except the small quantity of iron to be found in the
then inaccessible Weald. It had no copper and no tin, and therefore it
could not manufacture bronze. But the geographical position of England
generally, within sight of the European continent, made it certain that
if ever anywhere else bronze should come to be used, the
bronze-weaponed people must ultimately cross over and subjugate the
stone-weaponed aborigines of the island. Moreover, bronze was certain
to be first hit upon in those countries where tin and copper were most
easily workable--that is to say, in Asia. From Asia, the secret of its
manufacture spread to the outlying peninsula of Europe, where it was
quickly adopted by the Aryan Celts, who had already invaded the
outlying continent, armed only with weapons of stone. As soon as they
had learnt the use of bronze, certain great changes and improvements
followed naturally--amongst others, an immense advance in the art of
boat-building. The Celts of the bronze age soon constructed vessels
which enabled them to cross the narrow seas and invade Britain. Their
superior weapons gave them at once an enormous advantage over the
Euskarian natives, armed only with their polished flint hatchets, and
before long they overran the whole island, save only the recesses of
Wales and the north of Scotland. From that moment, the bronze age of
Britain set in--say some 1,000 or 1,500 years before the Christian era.
The Celts, however, did not exterminate the whole Euskarian people;
they were too few in number and too far advanced in civilisation for
such a course. They knew it was better to make them slaves than to
destroy them: for the Celts had just reached, but had not yet got
beyond, the slave-making stage of culture. To this day, people of mixed
Euskarian parentage, and marked by the long skull, dark complexion, and
black eyes of the Euskarian type, form a large proportion of the
English peasantry; and they are found even in Sussex, which
subsequently suffered more than most other parts of Britain from the
destructive deluge of Teutonic barbarism in the fifth century. But
though the Celts did not exterminate the Euskarians, they completely
Celticised them, just as the Teuton is now Teutonising the old
population of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In South Wales and
elsewhere, indeed, the aborigines retained their own language and
institutions, as Silures and so forth; but in the conquered districts
of southern and eastern Britain they learned the tongue of their
masters, and came to be counted as Celtic serfs. Thus, at the time when
Britain comes forth into the full historic glare of Roman civilisation,
we find the country inhabited by a Celtic aristocracy of Aryan
type--round-headed, fair-haired, and blue-eyed; together-with a _plebs_
of Celticised Euskarian or half-caste serfs, retaining, as they still
retain, the long skulls and dark complexions of their aboriginal
ancestors. This was the ethnical composition of the Sussex population
at the date of the first Roman invasions.
Under the bronze-weaponed Celts, a very different type of civilisation
became possible. In the first place a more extended chieftainship
resulted from the improved weapons and consequent military power; and
all Britain (at least, towards the close of the Celtic domination)
became amalgamated into considerable kingdoms, some of which seem to
have spread over several modern shires. Sussex, however, enclosed by
its barrier of forest, would naturally remain a single little
principality of itself, held, at least in later times, by a tribe known
to the Romans as Regni. Traces of Celtic occupation are mainly confined
to the Downs and the seaward slope of Sussex Proper; in the broad
expanse of the Weald, they are few and far between. The Celts occupied
the fertile valleys and alluvial slopes, cut down the woods by the
river sides and on the plains, and built their larger and more regular
camps of refuge upon the Downs, for protection against the kindred
Cantii beyond the Weald, or the more distantly-related Belgæ across the
Hayling tidal flats. Of these hill-forts, Hollingbury Castle, near
Brighton, may be taken as a typical example. Bronze weapons and other
implements of the bronze age are found in great numbers about Lewes in
particular (where the isolated height, now crowned by the Norman
Castle, must always have commanded the fertile river vale of the Ouse),
as well as at Chichester, Bognor, and elsewhere. But the great forest,
inhabited by savage beasts and still more terrible fiends, proved a
barrier to their northward extension. Even if they had cleared the
land, they could not have cultivated it with their existing methods;
and so it is only in a few spots near the upper river valleys that we
find any traces of outlying Celtic hamlets in the wilderness of the
Weald. Some kind of trade, however, must have existed between the Regni
and the other tribes of Britain, in order to supply them with the
bronze, whose component elements Sussex does not possess. Woolsonbury,
Westburton Hill, Clayton Hill, Wilmington, Hangleton Down, Plumpton
Plain, and many other places along the coast have yielded large numbers
of bronze implements; while the occurrence of the raw metal in lumps,
together with the finished weapons, at Worthing and Beachy Head, as
well the discovery of a mould for a socketed celt at Wilmington, shows
that the actual foundry work was performed in Sussex itself. A
beautiful torque from Hollingbury Castle attests the workmanship of the
Sussex founders. No doubt the tin was imported from Cornwall, while the
copper was probably brought over from the continent. Glass beads,
doubtless of Southern (perhaps Egyptian) manufacture, have also been
found in Sussex, with implements of the bronze age.
In the polished stone age, the county had been self-supporting, because
of its possession of flint. In the bronze age it was dependent upon
other places, through its non-possession of copper or tin. During the
former period it may have exported weapons from Cissbury; during the
latter, it must have imported the material of weapons from Cornwall and
Gaul.
Before the Romans came, the Celts of Britain had learned the use of
iron. Whether they ever worked the iron of the Weald, however, is
uncertain. But as the ores lie near the surface, as wood (to be made
into charcoal) for the smelting was abundant, and as these two facts
caused the Weald iron to be extensively employed in later times, it is
probable that small clearings would be made in the most accessible
spots, and that rude ironworks would be established.