Early Iron Workings -- The Celts
down, testified that Hastings was, at all events, near some important centre of the Celtic tribes.
It is quite certain that iron-ore was extensively worked in Sussex during the time of the Roman occupation of Britain. Roman and Romano-British remains are common in the cinder-heaps of Beauport, near Hastings. They have also been discovered at Maresfield, in Sussex, and other localities in the Weald. So far as the author is able to ascertain, there is not sufficient evidence to show that any considerable settlement existed at Hastings itself, during Roman times. The reported discoveries of remains dating from this period are so extremely rare and doubtful, taking into account the large amount of excavation which has been carried out at Hastings for building purposes during recent years, that it is imposible to conceive that anything like a fair-sized settlement could have existed, without leaving some more definite mark of its presence. It is of course possible to suppose, as some have done, that formerly a Roman oppidum flourished south of the present shore, on land now submerged ; but even had this been the case, one would have surely found more evidences of its existence on the immediately adjoining land. On the other hand, it is quite within the bounds of possibility, owing to the operations of the " Eastward Drift," that there may have been no port on the site of Hastings during the Roman occupation. The supposed traces of Roman entrenchments upon the " East Hill" must be considered, for the present at all events, very much open to question. There are, indeed, the remains of a huge earthwork running north and south, and raised as if to guard the hill and town from assault on the Ecclesbourne or eastern side ; but the remaining earthworks upon the hill (excepting the small rectangular entrenchment to the east centre) are very obscure and inconsiderable. The rectangular enclosure parenthetically mentioned is known to have been nought else but the graveyard of the mediaeval -
