Extracts from "The Story of Shoreham" by Henry Cheal - first published in 1921

"To all those my Fellow-townsmen who fared forth to the
Greatest War known to History.
And to the memory of those Gallant Heroes who fell,
nobly fighting in the Cause of Freedom and Justice,
this story of Shoreham is dedicated"

The Neolithic (later stone age) population of Britain-a darkwhite race-are said to have come from the deserts of the east, from Arabia and Egypt, and to have followed the shores of the Mediterranean in journeying hitherward. Any attempt to fix a date for this immigration is quite hopeless. It was far back in the distant ages, but this ancient people had settlements in thus part of the country which we now call Sussex, in the coast district between the Downs and the sea and in the river valleys.

On the alluvial lowlands of the Adur estuary they grew in abundance those cereals upon which they largely depended for their daily bread. At Cissbury Hill they obtained in abundance the flints for the manufacture of their stone hatchets and other implements. With these tools shafts were sunk and the whole hillside honeycombed with tunnels in the work of excavating the copious material found in the chalk. Some of the actual tools used in these mining operations are now in the British Museum, while flint implements from Cissbury are to be seen in the Museums of Brighton and Lewes. No one can tell us the duration of this industry at Cissbury, but the large number of implements found point to long and continued operations and its occupation as a factory.Some say that it must have lasted several thousand years. It was the Sheffield of the flint industry in Neolithic times.

Another race threw up the great hill-fort and in so doing cut the imposing ditch of their citadel through the filled-in shafts of the older mines.

If you have not already visited Cissbury, do so. You may follow the track over Lancing Downs and beyond, and will tread much the same path by which the primitive yet cunning artizan made his way up from the river of " running waters " to the flint factory on the hill-top. The place cannot fail to impress you. It was once teeming with a busy industry, the evidence of which is to be found in the countless flint chips and flakes scattered broadcast over the whole hill-side. When the Romans came stone weapons had long been superseded by bronze and iron, and still to-day this monument, sublime in its solitary grandeur, remains to speak to us of a people and a period so remote from our own time, as to make the Roman invasion of Britain appear in comparison as an event of yesterday.

At the time that this flint factory was in full swing we may reasonably conclude that the coast district from the Chichester marshland to Pevensey was not consolidated under a single rule, but that there existed chieftainships over several villages, confined for the most part to single river valleys. Such a principality in the fertile valley of the Adur and the coast strip from Worthing to Brighton would roughly correspond to the modern Rape of Bramber, possessing its own boundary of forest and its own camp of refuge on the hill-top. Now the flint-workers of Cissbury knew nothing of metals ; the iron ore in the almost inaccessible Weald was of no use to them. If aware of its existence they were totally ignorant of its possibilities. Copper and tin were alike unknown to them and therefore they could not manufacture bronze.

A Stone-Age" Sheffield "

The secret of the manufacture of bronze was probably first discovered in Asia, where tin and copper were most workable, and thence spread to Europe, where it was quickly adopted by the Aryan Celts. Having learnt the use of bronze certain great improvements followed, notably amongst others an immense advance in the art of boat-building. The men of the Bronze Age soon constructed vessels which enabled them to cross the narrow seas and invade Britain. Their superior weapons gave them an enormous advantage over the natives, armed only with their polished flint hatchets, and in a very short time they over ran nearly the whole island. This great invasion is said to have taken place some 1,000 or 1,500 years before the Christian era.

Thus the people of Britain came in two great waves. First the short dark Iberian (who mined for flints at Cissbury) and then the mighty Celt who conquered him. Thence forward the two peoples existed side by side, for the Celts did not exterminate those whom they had conquered, but made slaves of them, and these slaves learned the tongue of their masters.
At the date of the first Roman invasion these two distinct types of people were to be found in Sussex-a Celtic aristocracy of Aryan type, round-headed, fair-haired and blue-eyed, together with Celticised Euskarian or half-cast serfs, the latter retaining the long skulls and dark complexion of their aboriginal ancestors.

Under the bronze-weaponed Celts a more advanced type of civilization became possible, and a more extended chieftainship resulted from the improved weapons and consequent military power, and much of Britain became amalgamated into considerable kingdoms, some of which seem to have spread over several modern shires. But while this was generally so, Sussex, enclosed by its barrier of forest, seems to have remained a single little principality of itself, held at least in later times by a tribe known to the Romans as the Regni, whose prince or king had his seat of government at Regnum (Chichester).

The Celts occupied the fertile valleys and alluvial slopes, cut down the woods by the river-sides and built their more regular camps of refuge upon the Downs for protection from the neighbouring tribes, so that we find the traces of their occupation mainly confined to the Downs and the seaward slopes.
In the polished Stone Age the district had been self-supporting because of its possession of flint. In the Bronze Age it was dependent on other places through its non-possession of copper and tin. During the former period it may have exported weapons from Cissbury ; during the latter it must certainly have imported the material of weapons from Cornwall and Gaul.

Before the Romans came iron as well as tin was found and manufactured in Britain and bronze axes had been discarded in favour of iron swords and spears. There seems to have been a considerable intercourse with the continent and among the agricultural exports were cattle and hides, wheat and barley.

A British Prince

An important personage at the period of Julius Caesar's invasion, reigning over part of Britain, was Commius. This prince appears to have had three sons: Tincommius, who was king of the Regni (practically answering to the present county of Sussex) ; Verica, whose sway was over the eastern part of the Atrebates (Berkshire and the north part of Wilts), and Eppilos, who ruled over Kent.
Tincommius was king of the Regni when Caesar came and his coins have been found at various places, both in East and West Sussex, in our own immediate neighbourhood, at Bramber and Steyning, and on Lancing Downs. Coins of Verica have been found at several places in Sussex, including Shoreham and Steyning and on Lancing Downs. By this we may infer that the Regni and the Atrebates traded one with the other and that by the time the two brothers, Tincommius and Verica, ruled over their respective principalities some sort of overland communication-probably by track-ways through the dense forests existed.

Traces of the Roman Occupation

It is only reasonable to suppose that when the Romans came they found considerable village settlements on the shores of the Adur-at Shoreham, Botolphs, Bramber, and Steyningalthough these names were then unknown. It was then less a river and more an arm of the sea, which ran inland as far as Steyning, and its great importance must very early have been appreciated by them.If the site of the Roman Portus Adurni is to be found in these waters it may have embraced the whole of this estuary. Some place the actual Roman station in the neighbourhood of Aldrington and tell us that, like the lost " Atlantis," it long since sank beneath the waves. Others favour Bramber, and some say that its site was at Shoreham-Old Shoreham. On the analogy of other Roman ports in Britain the latter would seem to be the most likely place. It was but a short distance up the fair-way, but so far from the open sea as to give complete security to the vessels of the period. The name New Shoreham sufficiently proves that the first wharfing must have been higher up the river, and although the first opportunity for fortification was at Bramber, where it is quite likely that the Roman military governor of the district had his seat, we have the analogy of every port upon the Sussex rivers of a harbour forward of the first fortification.

But there are some who tell us that we must seek elsewhere than in this neighbourhood for Portus Adurni and that the river name " Adur " was first applied to these waters by Drayton in his poem " Polyolbion " (A.D. 1612). Up to that time, they say, it was usually known as the " Sore " (as in Holinshed's Chronicle, A.D. 1577). It is referred to in documents of the reign of Henry VIII. merely as " a certain river " and has been named at various times Bramber Water, Beeding River, Alder and Shoreham River. From this evidence it is argued that no Roman soldier ever set foot within miles of the Adur Valley and no Roman galley was ever seen upon its restless waves.

Alternative names for rivers, and especially for particular reaches of rivers, are of course quite common but they do not exclude one general name. The word Adur is of Celtic origin, " Dwyr " = running or flowing waters, and sufficiently describes the river as a whole, for it is seldom at rest. We may reasonably conclude that even before the Romans came and made it their Portus Adurni it was known as the Dwyr, the running waters, " hurrying down to the live sea " as one has so aptly written of it.

We know that the Roman engineers, nearly two thousand years ago, made that great military highway from the east gate of Regnum (Chichester) to London Bridge. We call it the " Stane Street " and much of it is still in use. From this road, in the neighbourhood of Croydon, there was apparently a junction which led directly to the Adur mouth. Of this highway two short sections have been discovered and they are in direct alignment towards Shoreham. Apparently the way was across St. John's Common (Burgess Hill) to the Hassocks sand pits, where many fine specimens of Romano-British pottery and Samian ware have recently been found. These are now exhibited in the Sussex Archaeological Museum at Lewes. The road ascended the South Downs by way of the old track up the Saddlescombe side of the Devil's Dyke and made for Portslade (Portus ladus = the way to the port) and so to the Adur mouth, joining or crossing a highway which ran from east to west through the county-from Anderida (Pevensey) to Regnum (Chichester). The latter highway probably crossed the Ouse at Lewes, which has been claimed as the site of the small Roman town of Mutuantonis.

Several specimens of Romano-British Pottery now in the Brighton Museum were found during the erection of the soldiers' huts north-east of Buckingham Park.
Mention may be made of several important Roman finds in the neighbourhood. Just across the river where the Downs rise towards Lancing Clump the foundations of a Roman villa, a bath and interments, were discovered in the year 1828. Numerous coins were also turned up at the same time, and these, ranging from the date of the Emperor Claudius (A.D. 41-54) to Gallienus (A.D. 260), seem to indicate a long possession of the spot by the Romans. Only a few years ago the foundations of a Roman temple were discovered amidst the trees at Chanctonbury Ring. In the course of the excavation of these remains coins were again found and these cover a period from the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68) to Gratian (A.D. 375-383). Roman remains have also been discovered at Botolphs. In the year 1800 about one hundred Roman urns were found on Beeding Hill, near the confines of Edburton and Old Shoreham parishes. Roman coins innumerable have been and are continually found in Shoreham. Worthing has yielded important finds of pottery and a notable incised stone now in Lewes Castle Museum. The discovery of a Roman villa at Preston (Brighton) and another at West Blatchington, near Hove, seems to suggest that the highway from east to west before mentioned ran through those places.

From the foregoing we may infer that Roman civilisation influenced this part of the country to a considerable extent. Doubtless the native population were for the most part engaged in agriculture and other useful arts and as the centuries passed they almost forgot the use of arms.

So it was that after four hundred and fifty years, when Imperial Rome was distressed by troubles nearer home and was compelled to withdraw her legions from these shores, the Britons were left without military protection and became an easy prey to their enemies. In a few years horde after horde of Saxon pirates swooped down upon the unprotected shores of Britain. Very soon their keels were swarming into the creeks and penetrating up the rivers of this county.