Judy
Middleton 2003
(revised 2024)
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| copyright
© Royal
Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove 1930s photograph of West Blatchington taken by Herbert Edward Sydney Simmons (1901-1973). New Cottages are on the left, St Peter's Church centre and West Blatchington Windmill on the right. Hangleton Road is under construction. |
The Roman Villa
The first public indication that there might be something of interest to uncover occurred in a letter written on 2 September 1818 by Revd James Douglas, vicar of Preston. He wrote ‘A few weeks since three labourers were employed on the ruins of the Roman Villa at Bletchington (sic); several excavations were made to the foundations of the walls, and in the area of two or three compartments, which produced a variety of fragments of Roman pottery, one of a hand-mill, the painted stucco of the walls, a great quantity of Roman bricks and some flue tiles; in one spot two coins of the small brass of Tetricus were found, apparently scattered from a hoard of some previous research; since which another has been picked up on the same spot.’
The
Revd J. Douglas was accompanied by a brother Fellow of the Royal
Society of Antiquaries, as well as the honorary secretary to the
Royal Academy.
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| copyright © National Library of Australia The Queenslander 3 November 1932
Although the Southwick Roman Villa was extensively excavated
and reputed to be one of the biggest Roman sites in Sussex, inexplicably, this Roman Villa was never preserved for future generations to view, as the whole site was subsequently covered by the Manor Hall Road housing estate and the Southwick Methodist Church. There are no visible traces on show today of the ruins of the Roman Villas at West Blatchington, Portslade, Kingston Buci and Preston (Brighton). |
The three-cornered field in which the ‘ruins’ were discovered was called West Laine, and was north of St Peter’s Church. Whoever the villa was built for, it commanded magnificent views west to Easthill, Portslade, and east to Whitehawk Hill. At the time of the excavation there was a barley crop growing on the site, and it is interesting to note that the barley growth was stunted on the part where the foundations of the wall were hidden below the surface. The Roman Villa was marked on the 6-in Ordnance Survey Map as being just below the 300-ft contour line, and around 200-ft from the western hedge – this ancient hedge forming the boundary between Hangleton and West Blatchington.
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| copyright © Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove A 1911 map showing the West Blatchington, showing St Peter's Church and the Windmill, to the east is the Three Cornered Copse and the Goldstone Water Works, to the north, Toads Hole and the site of the Roman Villa. |
He began work on 9 January 1947, and it was frustrating not to come across the Roman villa straight away. But he did find a tiled hearth, and a flint pavement. In April and May mechanical excavators employed for the construction of the new Sunninghill Council Estate dug trenches revealing features of the Roman period but still no villa.
The work was then placed under the auspices of the Brighton & Hove Archaeological Society. G. P. Burstow joined the band of volunteers that included boys from Brighton College and the Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School. Norris and Burstow wrote the definitive report on the excavation, which appeared in Sussex Archaeological Collections Volume 89.
The Roman Villa finally came to light while trenches were being dug for Amberley Drive.
The villa was a rectangular shape of the Basilican type, and measured 115-ft 6-in by 49-ft. There was a large hall divided by a double row of pillars, four on each side, leading into a nave and two aisles. It was fortunate that the villa had been built on land that was too steep to be ploughed, and thus the site was preserved. Although Basilican-type villas are fairly common in the country as a whole, it was the first one to be recorded in Sussex.
The north-east corner of the villa lay just outside the north wall of 31 Amberley Drive, while the west wall passed under the south-west corner of 29 Amberley Drive. Not surprisingly, the quality of workmanship in the villa was far superior than that employed in the corn-drying ovens.
The excavation also uncovered many other other details that convinced the archaeologists the site had been in almost continuous use since the late Bronze Age until the 4th century of Roman occupation.
Bronze Age
There were two late Bronze Age sites – one in Findon Close, and the other in Henfield Way, around 250-ft south of the first one.
At the first site, a scooped-out cooking place was discovered containing charcoal, animal bones, several ox teeth, a thick layer of pot-boilers, and some pottery fragments. A complete vessel of the same period was found 73-ft north of the cooking place, and a similar one some 50-ft to the west of the edge of the road.
At the second site, two bronze palstaves (a Bronze-Age axe), a broken winged axe, pottery fragments, and at least two storage vessels were found.
Iron Age
There was a cluster of hut sites, and the pottery included vessel fragments, while some bead-rim pottery was found at the junction of Midhurst Walk and Burwash Road.
Many pot-boilers were found, and the pottery finds included a type known as Samian Form 29 wine vine-leaf tendrils, as well as South-Eastern B Ware. Samian ware was characterised by being brick-red or black coloured pottery, with a lustrous glaze.The following lists Romano-British pottery finds:
A lid with a steam hole
A Colander
A small vessel with an eight-pointed star on the shoulder
Other Objects
A bronze brooch
Two pruning hooks, metal
A razor, metal
A carpenter’s centre bit, metal
A carpenter’s shell-bit, metal
Portion of an iron knife.
Also uncovered was a burial group consisting of five vessels containing burnt human bones. One of them was a bi-conical urn with everted rim and lattice decoration, and it was accompanied by a child’s feeding bottle while several milk teeth were found with the bones.
Second and Third Centuries
Two pear-shaped hearths were discovered in the east part of Steyning Avenue, as well as a great deal of 3rd century pottery. In Ditch A to the south of Steyning Avenue more pottery fragments were found including the base of a Samian ware vessel bearing the stamp of the potter Regalis, who was known to have worked in the Hadrian / Antonine period. A well-preserved spear-head also came to light.
Corn-drying Ovens
The Romano-British farm appeared to have an important position as a centre for drying corn because no less than eleven corn-drying ovens were uncovered. It was estimated that the number represented around half of the original number. Numbers 3 and 4 were located underneath the walls of what became 15 & 16 Findon Close; number 7 was under the front garden of 39 Beeding Avenue, and number 8 was under 16 Steyning Avenue.
It is interesting to note that flint conglomerates, similar to the well-known Goldstone, were used in the walls of the oven. Unfortunately, none of them gave any indication of how the drying floor was constructed, or how the flue in the roofing was arranged.
But it is worth recording that in 1932 Dr E. Cecil Curwen found two T-shaped corn-drying ovens on Thundersbarrow Hill, and in 1950 N. E. Norris uncovered a corn-drying oven at Kingston Buci with an arched flue of flint and soft mortar, and it is probable that the ones at West Blatchington were of similar design.
The oven floor was created to provide an even heat while at the same time ensuring the corn did not come into contact with flames and smoke. Resting on the base of one oven was the complete base of a cup identified as form 33, bearing the mark of the potter Quintas who was active in the middle of the 2nd century at Lezoux in east Gaul.
Corn-drying at West Blatchington started in around the middle of the 2nd century and continued until the end of the 3rd century.
Romano-British
A
floor metalled with small flints and measuring 20-ft by 18-ft was
discovered in Findon Close. Hundreds of nails, two ‘bits’ for a
wood drill, and a baked clay pendant or plumb-bob were unearthed.
Amongst the hundreds of pottery shards were the following:
2nd century Samian ware
New Forest ware
Castor ware
3rd and 4th century late red-coated ware
A star of Solomon decorated the rim of one vessel fragment.
In the footings of 15 Steyning Avenue a cremation site was uncovered that revealed the broken base of a grey urn containing burnt adult bones, the remains of a food vessel, and the base of a thick, red-sandy ware bottle.
The second group had a similar grey urn, part of the base and side of a thick red-sandy ware bottle, black glazed Castor ware, a Samian platter, and a large Samian platter made at Rheinzabern in the Antonine era.
The third group yielded an almost complete cinerary urn, coarse grey just like the others, Samian ware with a vine-leaf barbotine decoration on the rim.
Unfortunately all the vessels were in poor condition because they were discovered a mere 10-in below ground level.
Roman-British Coins
Hadrian A.D. 119-120 (20 coins)
Antoninus Pius A.D. 138-161 (5 coins)
Commodus A.D. 177-192 (2 coins)
Crispina Augusta, wife of Commodus A.D. 180-183
Clodius Albinus A.D. 196-197
Caracalla A.D. 201-206
Posthumus A.D. 259-260
Claudius II A.D. 268-270
Tetricus I A.D. 270-273 (5 coins, three of them found by Revd J. Douglas in 1818)
Minim of 3rd century A.D.
Constantine I c. A.D. 310
Other Finds
Three fragments of glass bottles
Base of a thin glass bowl
Two bronze rings
Part of a bronze brooch with a triangular setting for a stone
Bronze brooch pin
Numerous ox bones
Bones of sheep, horse and pig
Analysis of charcoal deposits revealed that oak, gorse, birch, and hazel had been used for the fires.
More Romano-British Finds in 1954
During
building works in 1954 in Elizabeth Avenue a grave group from the
late Roman period were discovered. The finds were made at a depth of
2-ft, and the map reference was TQ285071.
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© J. Middleton |
The cinerary urn was dated to around A.D. 259-400; it was coloured yellow-brown to black of a type known as East Sussex ware, and was decorated with St Andrew’s-type crosses. The remains consisted of 927 fragments, but there was no dental material.
Dr Philip Armitage of Booth Museum suggested tentatively that the remains might have belonged to a 21-year old girl. Accompanying her was a sandy-orange coloured bowl with a few traces of red-brown. There was a globular beaker of the same colour, a light grey coloured bottle made from some hard sandy material, and a buff-brown beaker with a rouletted decoration and a small foot.
At around the same time in 1954 some pottery was found at Cobden Drive (Map Ref. TQ283072). Unhappily, before Eric Holden could get to the site and record the items, the pieces had been dispersed.
Miscellaneous
In the 1930s L. V. Grinsell identified a small barrow on the West Blatchington / Patcham boundary. Its position on the 1933 6-in Ordnance Survey Map was given as 52SE 15.6-in from the left inner margin, and 0.25-in from the bottom inner margin.
In 1938 some radiates were found in Woodland Avenue, while in 1958 from the back garden of number 13 a coin was unearthed – it was a dupondius of Hadrian (3rd or 4th century).
In 1981 Eric Holden expressed concern about the proposed route of the Brighton By-pass, fearing it could damage unexplored archaeological sites. The entire proposed route was field-walked in 1986 and 1987, the participants discovering on the way throughout a scattering of Neolithic and Bronze Age flint flakes – with the exception of the site east of Coldean. At West Blatchington finds included part of a quern, a knife, mediaeval pottery, grey and buff ware, and green-glazed ware. But the most important discovery was the wooden henge at Portslade.
Sources
Encyclopaedia of Hove and Portslade
Sussex
Archaeological Collections – Volume
89
National Library of Australia
Ordnance Survey Maps
Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove
Copyright © J.Middleton 2024
Page Design and Additional Research by D. Sharp