What have the Romans ever done for us?

Another walk up towards the north of the parish yesterday, the goal of which was the Roman iron work site at Cansiron. Walking up the bridleway part of Cansiron Lane there is a small bit of ancient woodland on the left, called Shipyard Pett. Pett is an Old English-derived word for pit, but I'm puzzled about the shipyard connection, unless it is a corruption of something else. We're not exactly close to the sea, especially if one is trying to transport stuff.


I carried on up Cansiron Lane. This picture is as you come to to Owletts cottage, with more ancient woodland either side of the path: Leg of Mutton Shaw on the left, and Bushy Shaw on the right.


Then on through Holden wood:


Once I was out in the open there was some buzzing in the air, and I was near the flying site of Wealden Model Aircraft Society. I cut across the footpath heading west, through some more woods (including this rather nice bit of coppicing):


and soon hit the site of the iron works:


This is a major site, as the Wealden Iron Research Group database makes clear:

This very large site lies about 2km from the Roman London-Lewes Road (Margary's Route 14). WIRG members have fieldwalked it intensively and have collected a large quantity of pottery and building materials from the surface of the 2ha 'industrial area', represented by an area of blackened soil. The coarse pottery found is largely from the late first and second centuries, the samian being largely late second-century. Two coins were found, dupondii of Vespasian and Trajan respectively.

As I was walking around it I could see loads of bits of iron and other evidence of industrial activity, as well as other bits that may well have been tiles and pot shards, though I'm no archaeologist. There's a useful summary article on Roman Sussex on the Archaeology Data Service website, and in fact there is more to the Cansiron site than the iron bloomery; it is also the site if a Roman tilery, which was excavated in the 1980s.[1]

The Romans in Sussex web site entry for the bloomery also notes that there is a Romano-British cemetery site here too. Once again, the vestiges of the past are right under our feet.


[1] David R. Rudling, Caroline Cartwright, Giles Swift, Sally Foster, John Shepherd, Pat Hinton and Fred Tebbutt, "The Excavation of a Roman Tilery on Great Cansiron Farm, Hartfield, East Sussex", Britannia, Vol. 17, (1986), pp. 191-230, available from JSTOR