PART, ‘PI. 
The history of the Borough. 
CHAPTER I. 
Earty History To A.D, 1300. 
HEN we pass from the records of stone and sand 
to those of human origin, in other words pass 
from geologic time to the pre-historic and historic 
periods, the evidences of early occupation of 
Lewisham and the surrounding neighbourhood 
are at first but few. Of pre-Roman date very 
little has been brought to notice within the borough, if we 
except some of the mounds on Blackheath, which are ill-defined, 
and to which a period cannot with any certainty be assigned. 
In 1803 some funeral urns were discovered in the grounds of 
Dartmouth House, on Blackheath, which were pronounced to be 
Roman. They were exhibited by the Earl of Dartmouth before 
the Society of Antiquaries, and afterwards presented by him to 
the British Museum.* 
In 1806 some Roman antiquities were found by a labourer as. 
he was digging in a gravel pit on Sydenham Common. Amongst 
them were fragments of tablets of copper containing part of a 
decree of the Emperor Trajan in favour of the veterans of the 
auxiliary cohorts serving in Britain. An account of this discovery 
was published by Lysons. 
The first documentary notice of the place is in a grant made in 
A.D. 862, by Aethelberht, of Wessex, to Deightwald, the thegn, of 
land at Bromley. In this the bounds of ‘‘ Bromleag” are given in 
Saxon, and are stated to run from Ceddanleag to Langanleag 
(Langley in Beckenham) and ‘‘ Liofshema,” then to Wonstoc and 
Modingahema, &c., &c.t Ina charter by Aethelred, regranting 
this land, in A.D. 968, the same bounds are named, but Lewisham 
is styled ‘*Leofsuhaema.”{ These early instances, which were 
overlooked by Philpot, Hasted, and other historians of the county, 
supply the clue to the derivation of the name, of which Professor 
~ Skeat has given the following explanation :— 
In the forms Liofshema and Leofsuhaema, the -a is only a 
case-ending. The phrase ‘“ Léofsuhaema mearc,” as it is found 
* Archaeologia, Vol. XV. + Kemble’s Charters, No. 287. 
+ Kemble’s Charters, No. 657- 
