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Late Romans and Saxons in Sussex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

M. G. Welch
M. G. Welch
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford
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Extract

The problem of what happened in Britain in the fifth century A.D. has long fascinated historians, and archaeology is now helping to supplement the meagre written source-material. The county of Sussex is a very useful area to investigate thus, for it contains archaeological evidence which points to a Saxon settlement geographically isolated in the pagan period from the settlements in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, and it formed a known independent kingdom.

Type
Articles
Information
Britannia , Volume 2 , November 1971 , pp. 232 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © M. G. Welch 1971. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 The pagan period is defined by the continued use of pagan burial practices, including a period of compromise after the formal conversion to Christianity, and in Sussex dates between the fifth and eighth centuries.

2 The writer would like to acknowledge his thanks to the Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey and also to Mrs. S. C. Hawkes and Dr. E. Stone for their advice and encouragement in his research for an undergraduate thesis, on which this paper is based.

3 This was the forest of Andredslea mentioned by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 477. Again the Life of St. Wilfred, attributed to Eddius Stephanus, states that Sussex had remained pagan ‘pro rupium multitudine et silvarium densitate’, which had prevented its conquest by other kingdoms.

4 Victoria County History of Sussex, iii, 61.

5 Ibid., p. 65.

6 The last coin is of Magnentius (350–3), but there is no evidence for violent destruction and Professor S. S. Frere informed the writer that he considers it possible for occupation to have continued into the fifth century.

8 Morris, J.. ‘Dark Age Dates’, Britain and Rome, ed. M. G. Jarrett and B. Dobson. 1966, pp. 157, 167–8, 183 n. 88.Google Scholar

9 Evison, V. I., ‘Quoit Style Buckles’, Antiq. Journ., xlviii (1968), 231–249CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Medieval Archaeology, xii (1968), 161.Google Scholar

10 The flanged bowl which dated the refortification is now missing from Worthing Museum (Sussex Archaeological Collections, 82 (1941), 37).Google Scholar The other late Roman pottery from cuttings in and IV at the hill-fort is claimed to have been very similar to that discovered in the excavations of the bathhouse (Ibid., 81 (1940), 197) and is also given a date at the end of the third to the beginning of the fourth century. One flanged bowl from the bathhouse excavation is illustrated (Ibid., 80 (1939), 75, fig. IX, 12) and appears to belong to Gillam's Northern British type 228 and would therefore belong to the second half of the fourth century. Dr. A. E. Wilson agrees with the writer that this pottery should be now dated later in the fourth century.

11 Jones, M. U., ‘Crop-Mark Sites at Mucking, Essex’. Antiq. Journ., xlviii (1968), 210–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Cunliffe, B., Antiq. Journ., xlvi (1966), 43–7; xlix (1969), 65–7; 1 (1970), 67–85.Google Scholar