East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent to the north and east, West Sussex to the west, and Surrey for a short distance to the north-west, as well as the English Channel to the south.
Ashdown Forest is an ancient area of open heathland occupying the highest sandy ridge-top of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is situated some 30 miles (48 km) south of London in the county of East Sussex, England. Rising to an elevation of 732 feet (223 m) above sea level, its heights provide expansive vistas across the heavily wooded hills of the Weald to the chalk escarpments of the North Downs and South Downs on the horizon.
The South Downs are a range of chalk hills that extends for about 260 square miles (670 km2) across the south-eastern coastal counties of England from the Itchen Valley of Hampshire in the west to Beachy Head, in the Eastbourne Downland Estate, East Sussex, in the east. The Downs are bounded on the northern side by a steep escarpment, from whose crest there are extensive views northwards across the Weald. The South Downs National Park forms a much larger area than the chalk range of the South Downs and includes large parts of the Weald.
Wealden is a local government district in East Sussex, England. Its council is based in Hailsham. The district's name comes from the Weald, the remnant forest which was once unbroken and occupies much of the centre and north of the area.
The A22 is one of the two-digit major roads in the south east of England. Radial, it carries traffic from London to the Eastbourne area of the East Sussex coast, in which town it ends. For part of its route the A22 utilises the turnpikes opened in the 18th century:
Roman roads in Britannia were initially designed for military use, created by the Roman Army during the nearly four centuries (AD 43–410) that Britannia was a province of the Roman Empire.
Hartfield is a village and civil parish in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. The parish also includes the settlements of Colemans Hatch, Hammerwood and Holtye, all lying on the northern edge of Ashdown Forest.
Stane Street is the modern name of the 91 km-long (57 mi) Roman road in southern England that linked Londinium (London) to Noviomagus Reginorum (Chichester). The exact date of construction is uncertain; however, on the basis of archaeological artefacts discovered along the route, it was in use by 70 AD and may have been built in the first decade of the Roman occupation of Britain.
Barcombe is an East Sussex village about 4–5 miles (6.4 km) north of Lewes. It more broadly a civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex. Barcombe itself is the older of three settlements in the parish; Barcombe Cross is much more populous and the main hub with the amenities and services, where the villagers evacuated during medieval plague the Black Death; and the latter has a near outpost north of Barcombe Mills on the River Ouse. Hamlets are Spithurst in the north east and Town Littleworth in the north west.
Chanctonbury Ring is a prehistoric hill fort atop Chanctonbury Hill on the South Downs, on the border of the civil parishes of Washington and Wiston in the English county of West Sussex. A ridgeway, now part of the South Downs Way, runs along the hill. It forms part of an ensemble of associated historical features created over a span of more than 2,000 years, including round barrows dating from the Bronze Age to the Saxon periods and dykes dating from the Iron Age and Roman periods.
Limpsfield is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England, at the foot of the North Downs close to Oxted railway station and the A25. The composer Frederick Delius and orchestral conductor Sir Thomas Beecham are buried in the village churchyard and there are 89 listed buildings.
Port Way is an ancient road in southern England. Commonly associated with the Roman Empire, the road ran between Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) and Sorbiodunum (Salisbury), but may have predated the Roman occupation of Britain.
Titsey is a rural village and a civil parish on the North Downs almost wholly within the M25 London Orbital Motorway in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England.
The Sussex Greensand Way is a Roman road that runs east-west linking the London to Lewes Way at Barcombe Mills to Stane Street at Hardham. The road, which has almost entirely fallen out of use, follows the free draining ridge of greensand which lies north of the South Downs. It is a planned route rather than a Romanised Iron Age track, following a few straight alignments without any steep gradients, which linked various north-south roads and tracks. A number of important Roman villas and their farming estates were linked by the road. It is not known at what time during the Roman period the road was built.
The London to Brighton Way, also called the London to Portslade Way, is a Roman road between Stane Street at Kennington Park and Brighton in Sussex. The road passes through Streatham and Croydon, then through the Caterham Valley gap in the North Downs. It passes through Godstone and Felbridge, then follows an almost straight line through Ardingly, Haywards Heath, Burgess Hill and Hassocks to the South Downs at Clayton. At Hassocks it crosses the Sussex Greensand Way at a large Roman cemetery. It climbs the South Downs escarpment, crossing the ridgeway and connecting with other local tracks. South of Pyecombe the route is uncertain, and may have continued to Brighton or to Portslade.
The Chichester to Silchester Way is a Roman Road between Chichester in South-East England, which as Noviomagus was capital of the Regnenses, and Silchester or Calleva Atrebatum, capital of the Atrebates. The road had been entirely lost and forgotten, leaving no Saxon place names as clues to its existence, until its chance discovery through aerial photography in 1949. Only 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) of the 62 kilometres (39 mi) long road remain in use.
Ashdown Forest formed an important part of the Wealden iron industry that operated from pre-Roman times until the early 18th century. The industry reached its peak in the two periods when the Weald was the main iron-producing region of Britain, namely in the first 200 years of the Roman occupation and during Tudor and early Stuart times. Iron-smelting in the former period was based on bloomery technology, while the latter depended for its rapid growth on the blast furnace, when the Ashdown area became the first in England to use this technology.
Ashdown Forest contains a wealth of archeological features. Absence of ploughing, predominance of heathland and lack of building development have allowed archaeological sites to survive and remain visible. More than 570 such sites have been identified, including Bronze Age round barrows, Iron Age enclosures, prehistoric field systems, iron workings from Roman times onwards, the Pale, medieval and post-medieval pillow mounds for the rearing of rabbits, and a set of military kitchen mounds between Camp Hill and Nutley dating from 1793 that are among the only surviving ones in the United Kingdom. The earliest known trace of human activity in Ashdown Forest is a stone hand axe found near Gills Lap, which is thought to be about 50,000 years old. The vast majority of finds however date from the Mesolithic and onwards into the modern era.
The Rape of Lewes is one of the rapes, the traditional sub-divisions unique to the historic county of Sussex in England.
