Sussex was no exception to this rule. Small as was the extent of its then habitable or thickly-populated part (virtually confined to the coast-plain, for the Downs could not be inhabited, the villages of their foot-hills were few, and the belt between them and the Weald was difficult of access), small as was that portion, it contained two considerable towns—Anderida and Regnum. Anderida lay upon the site of Pevensey, Regnum is Chichester. What other settlements it had of a strictly Roman nature, as distinguished from the Celtic villages and the isolated farms held both by Celtic and by Roman masters, we cannot tell. The Roman remains of Lewes prove it (as does its site) to have been a place of importance since the beginning of history, but we cannot identify it with certitude. Arundel, a place obviously as old, has hitherto furnished no Roman relics. It is possible that Bramber was fortified; and it is fairly certain, though it is not positive history, that the mouth of the old estuary at Shoreham was the Portus Adurni. More than this we cannot say.
But there is contained in Sussex a further and more striking evidence of the power of Rome than even the line of the wall at Chichester or the ruins of Anderida. This is to be found in the great track of the Stane Street, the Roman road which led from the East Gate of Chichester to London, and of which so large a part is in actual use to-day.
This great monument of our past is equalled by little else in our island as a dramatic witness of the source from which we spring. The Roman wall between Tyne and Solway has afforded much more food for scholarship, and is in places of a more active effect upon the eye, but it does not appear before us as does the Stane Street, possessed of a constant historic use, and explaining the development of a whole district.
This military way can be traced, with a few gaps, for a space of fifty miles and more; from the eastern gate of Chichester to the neighbourhood of Epsom, where it passes just between Lord Rosebery’s house and the race-course, having crossed the Surrey border in the neighbourhood of Ockley, and pursued its way through Dorking churchyard across Burford Bridge, through the gardens of Juniper Hall, and so northwards and eastwards.
The line of it in Sussex is clear to any one who glances at an Ordnance map. It is a hard road over the first mile on leaving Chichester. At the village of West Hampnet, some unknown cause in the
THE STANE STREET
remote past has diverted it, and the original line is lost in the fields behind the workhouse of the place; but within another mile it once more coincides with the present high road and goes straight for the Downs. Close upon it was founded the Abbey of Boxgrove which, like Hyde and Westminster and so many others, owed its site to the presence of a great national way. It goes on over the shoulder of Halnacker Hill, then plunges through the north wood where it is no longer traceable as a road, but as a high ridge for several miles. It emerges upon the open grass of the Downs at Gumber Farm, where it still marks a division between ancient properties and modern fields. It then climbs down the escarpment of the hills upon the north side in a great curve which has given its name to the farm of Cold Harbour,—for the word Cold harbour, which so frequently occurs in English topography, is probably derived from the Latin “Curbare,” and marks the points where the usually dead straight line of the Roman road was compelled for some local reason to adopt a curve.
Immediately at the foot of this curve is to be found the little village of Bignor, which contains one of the most perfect Roman pavements in England, and which has been conjectured to be the “Ad Decimam”—the tenth milestone from Chichester. It may be the villa of a private estate or (more probably) the military residence of a small garrison. From this point to Pulborough Bridge the track of the road is conjectural, with the exception of a few stretches, where, even to-day, the discoloration of the earth in the ploughed fields marks the old line in the Stane Street. At Hardham, however, just before it reaches the marshes of the Arun, its passage is clearly discernible due east of a still defined camp which stands in between Petworth branch line and the main line of the L.B.S.C.R., just before their junction. Immediately beyond, on the farther side, stood the old Priory of Hardham which, like Boxgrove, must have owed its site to the neighbourhood of the way.
The remaining mile over the marshes to Pulboro’ Bridge is, of course, absolutely lost. It is a universal rule of topography throughout Britain, that where a Roman causeway crossed a marsh, it has been lost in the barbaric centuries by a slow process of sinking into the soft soil below. But the direction which the Stane Street must have followed when the causeway existed is not difficult to determine; it is to be decided by a consideration which
