Connecting Communities
In 2014, a large-scale archaeological excavation took place at Pocock’s Field, Kings Drive, Eastbourne. Until the expansion of Eastbourne over the last 100 years or so, this area bridged the gap between the South Downs and the Willingdon Levels and was home to communities working and living in these two landscapes for at least 4000 years. From its earliest use as a Bronze Age cemetery; specialist work collecting salt in the Iron Age; processing crops in the Roman period and the first evidence of an Early Saxon settlement in Eastbourne, these discoveries not only add to the story of the area but show us how this site and the people living there connect with other communities and their place in the wider landscape.
An Industry for Trade?
People lived at Pocock’s Field from at least the Early Iron Age around 2400 years ago. This settlement included a roundhouse and a ditched enclosure. A burial of an Iron Age woman and child and massive amounts of saltworking waste, tanks and pits used by the people living there were discovered alongside a droveway leading to the Downland.
This community probably chose this location for their settlement, so close to the edge of the marsh, to use its resources for saltworking. Although evidence for only one roundhouse was found, its likely that the settlement also included more temporary buildings or structures constructed to house the people working there while saltworking was taking place in the summer months. Water was collected from the wetland at least 100 metres away and stored in large brine tanks to settle any silts and to start evaporation. The settled brine solution was then taken to a nearby saltern (a hearth used for salt evaporation) where the rest of the water would evaporate. In their simplest forms, these salterns consisted of a fire with an open pot about it. The pots either rested on the hearth itself or on clay pedestals. At this point, the salt would still be too bitter so fresh water was added and the salt rich paste was then left to air dry or finish drying beside the fire. The finished salt cakes were then lifted from or broken out of the clay pots. Its likely that leather bags or baskets woven from reeds in the marsh were used to transport the salt cakes elsewhere.
The amount of salt cakes produced there was more than a single household would need and it would have been a highly valued trade product. Its likely that men and women would be involved in the saltworking process as well as using the quern stones for grain processing, chalk and fired clay loom weights, spindle whorl and bone bobbins discovered elsewhere in the settlement.
Iron Age People
An Iron Age woman and child were found buried nearby the settlement and were buried with the woman’s arm around the child. The child was aged between 4 and 5 years old when they died . The woman was 30 – 45 years old when she died and was 156cm tall. Analysis of her skeleton showed that she suffered with osteoarthritis of the spine, hip and feet which was likely worsened through agricultural or saltworking tasks.
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They were also buried with two glass beads found near the neck of the child but we don't know if they were worn around the child's neck or the woman's wrist. You can see a 3D model of one of the beads here
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There is some evidence that, at the end of each summer, the community living there closed down the saltworking site and deposited pottery, animal remains, saltworking pedestals, human bones, charcoal and fire cracked flint in pits found around the settlement before returning to another settlement – most likely on the South Downs.
This type of structured deposition has been recorded at a slightly later Iron Age site in St Anne’s Road (later the site of a Saxon Cemetery) where grain storage pits were then filled with querns, ploughing and reaping tools, and charred spelt wheat grains at the end of the grain processing season.
Briquetage and Breakages
The term briquetage is used to describe the clay containers, supports and pedestals used in the saltworking process. There were not many complete containers found at Pocock’s Field but instead, an extraordinary amount of pottery that showed signs of being in a saltwater environment. Fragments of over 16000 vessels were uncovered, all dating to the early – middle Iron Age, when saltworking was the main activity on site and most measured between 15 and 24cm in diameter. One of the explanations for the significant amount of pottery uncovered is that these pots were used in the later stages of salt production and had to be broken to release the finished salt cakes.
There are some similarities between the salt affected pottery from Pocock’s Field and the pottery discovered at the pottery production site in Green Street Drove (now Filching Road area) suggesting that the pottery at Pocock’s was made there or reused for saltworking.
A Farmstead for the Villa?
As saltworking slowed, likely moved elsewhere due to a change in environment of perhaps more trade from different communities, the people occupying the Pocock’s Field area were involved in another specialised skill – crop processing and storage.
This increased in the Roman period and the area was likely to have been part of a larger villa estate with the main villa building to the north (where Eastbourne General District Hospital is today.) This Roman community would have grown wheat and barley, harvested then used the threshing floor to separate the cereal from the straw, used their corn drying oven to dry wheat prior to milling or to dry grain for use in malting.
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Crop processing continued and later in the Roman period, around 300CE a small cemetery was added to the north of the settlement focussed around an enclosed square shrine. This cemetery contained four burials – two adults (one male and one female), and two children. Although they were buried at different times, they may have been part of the same family group. The female and both children were buried in wooden coffins and one of the children was buried wearing hobnailed shoes. Shortly after this cemetery was founded, the settlement was abandoned after almost continuous use for 500 years.
A fragment of Roman flue tile found at Pocock’s Field has the same rolled decoration as examples found at the Roman Villa uncovered under Eastbourne seafront as well as at Frost Hill (near Beachy Head). The discovery of these tiles at Frost Hill could be signs of a connection between the Roman farm there and the villa on the seafront, perhaps the tile was brought to the Downland as rubbish, possibly as a load of manure for the fields.
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A deer antler was also found in a Roman Droveway at Pocock’s Field. Although this antler doesn’t have any evidence of being worked by people, it must have been brought to the site by someone living or travelling through there as it isn’t likely a deer would have been passing through the meadowland environment (as it was at the time). Explore a 3D model of it here
Weaving, Workshops and a New Way
The location of a Saxon settlement in Eastbourne was a mystery until five sunken feature buildings and one post-built hall house were uncovered at Pocock’s Field. The sites of two Saxon cemeteries, the largest one at St Anne’s Road, were investigated in the 1990s and some of the people buried there probably lived in the hall at this settlement.
Sunken featured buildings like the five found at Pocock’s Field were often used for storage or craft workshops and its likely that these were used for grain storage and weaving or other cloth production. A number of bone thread pickers, used for separating threads on a loom, were found in one of these buildings as well as 50 sherds of Saxon pottery. It’s possible that other hall houses were built nearby and the residents there also used the workshops and storage buildings.
By 700CE, this settlement went out of use and Eastbourne’s Saxon residents moved elsewhere, likely closer to the Downland. At the end of the Saxon period, one of the connecting routes between different areas of Eastbourne, in this case the Marshland and the Downland, was founded. Although it likely followed the route of earlier trackways, it provided access to valuable resources and communities.
Expanding their Horizons
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After 500 years, a new settlement was established again at Pocock’s Field. From the 12th century the area, developing around a Holloway or routeway leading to the Downland, was home to a farmstead with the residents living and farming the area and accessing the marshland. After a terrible outbreak of bubonic plague in 1348-9 wiped out around half of the population, sheep farming increased in Eastbourne. This was partly because fewer people and resources were needed but also because there was abundant grazing land available on the Downland and marshland (which by that time was significantly drier). Although it was big business, as more plagues swept the country, the economy and the people of Eastbourne suffered.
By the 15th century, the economic outlook had improved enough for a large house – around 20 metres long, to be built at Pocock’s Field and remain there for at least 150 years. This building probably had 3 rooms with two storey ranges either side of a central hall that was open to the roof and heated by a hearth in the middle. It’s likely that much of the rubbish generated by this household was disposed of elsewhere – possibly in the marshland. There was a significant amount of metalwork found in the area including box hinges, candlesticks, kitchen knives, agricultural and woodworking tools as well as 21 horseshoes which suggests a well-equipped farmhouse and a reasonably wealthy farmer.
Things were looking good for the owner of this house and the building was extended in the 16th century with the addition of a stair tower and Brewhouse. The beer produced by the brewhouse would have been for the people living in this building but its possible, as was the case elsewhere, that if they had more than they needed, they would have hung a sign outside to advertise its sale to those passing by using the Holloway route.
A vital part of the brewhouse was the malt kiln added to the side of the building. Burnt charcoal rich deposits from the base of the kiln and from a layer above the chalk floor next to it contained samples of wheat, barley and peas but also a mixture of gorse, oak and ash used for fuel to keep the fire burning. Grain would have been dried slowly with a low heat in the malt kiln and the rest of the brewing process may have taken place elsewhere.
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All historical landscape reconstruction illustrations courtesy of Archaeology South East
