The Invasion Coast

Pre Roman Times
This area was one which received many tribes from the ”continent” in Pre- Historic times,

Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) hunters walked across the land-link, which existed where the English Channel now is, and left stone tools and hand axes.
During the MESOLITHIC (Middle Stone Age) period, the Ice Sheets began to melt and there was serious flooding - forning the North Sea and English Channel.

Neolithic (New Stone Age) times saw different tribes come across the sea from what is now Northern France and Belgium and bringing a ‘revolution’ in life style, having developed farming as a way to 1ive, as opposed to just surviving by hunting and gathering as had previous visitors. More detailed evidence remains from about 3000BC, when two streams of culture met on the chalk downs of Sussex, one from the south-west, the ‘civilised’ Mediterranean world, and which has been named MEGALITHIC culture, and the other from the east, the outer edge of NEOLITHIC Europe. The latter came in across ‘our’ coastline.

Subsequently individual peoples can be identified - BEAKER FOLK about 1900 BC and WESSEX tribes about 1600 BC - named, in the first case, by their special burials in ’beakers’ and the latter by their skills in designing and trading. A flint ‘factory’ has recently been discovered at Iden.

The Bronze Age is named for the times when the people had learned the skills of metal working - about 700 BC.

Iron Age folk came in waves between 500 and 50BC and many of these have been called CELTIC peoples. There is now some dispute as to whether there was a distinct Celtic ‘tribe’ or a group of similar peoples. Britain entered the ‘full Iron Age’ in mid first century BC when the BELGAE tribe came from the lower Rhineland.

In our area there was a vigorous and technically well advanced ironmaking industry in existence, based on the Wadhurst Clay Ridge, above Hastings, which had iron ore and timber for charcoa1. Ingots were shipped out by small estuarine ports on the Brede and the Rother, to other parts of the Belgic south-east - coastwise to the Chichester-Fishbourne area, or to Kent, and across the Channel to Gaul.

Other items exported to mainland Europe from our area were hunting dogs and slaves.
Our district, around the mouth of the Rother, was the border zone between the tribes of the CANTII (or Cantiaci) and the ATREBATES.