It’s interesting to link up different “periods” of history.  We compartmentalise for convenience – the Iron Age, the Roman era, the Anglo-Saxons, and so on – and simplify the transition from one to another down to one decisive battle or treaty.  In practice, customs and relationships would have overlapped and changed more gradually.  The Catuvellauni tribe in what’s now the St Albans area had been trading with the Roman empire before the armies arrived in 43 CE, so found it fairly easy to adjust.  The Iceni from East Anglia, by contrast, famously fought to the death under Boudicca.

West Sussex has examples of Iron Age and Roman life fairly close by.  Cissbury Ring is a large Iron Age hillfort high on the South Downs, which commands views through 360 degrees over the countryside and the sea.  It was used as a fort from 400 BCE to about 100 BCE, but the land was used for cultivation in the first century CE when the Romans arrived. 

So how did their interactions first take place?  It’s easy to imagine that late Iron Age farmers could have been working on hill tops such as this, and spot the arrival of Roman troops in the valleys below.  In the words of the poem ‘Roman Road’ by A G Prys-Jones,

             “And dreamers hear when the shadows fall

            The stirring sound of their bugle-call;

            Men from Africa, men from Gaul

            Marching over the Hill!”

The road which the Romans built through Sussex – Stane Street – is still visible a few miles from Cissbury Ring: indeed it is reckoned to be one of the best preserved of the well known Roman roads in Britain.  It ran from London to Chichester, and a recent walk took us along one of the clearest sections a few miles from the southern end.  It’s certainly got some of the familiar characteristics: it’s straight, and has the high centre, or agger, with the road falling away on both sides.  On the other hand, it’s quite narrow in places – as trees have grown up, for instance: not many soldiers could march side by side, never mind allowing two chariots to pass each other. 

That said, in the driest English summer for decades, the landscape becomes one where soldiers from Italy might have felt more at home.  A legion relieved of the job of patrolling Hadrian’s Wall might feel that the march south had been worthwhile.  But they might still have felt a pang of homesickness as they approached Chichester and saw the sea shimmering before them …

NOTE I explore these themes in more detail in the early chapters of “This Ancient Road: London to Holyhead: A Journey through Time” (RedDoor, 2017).