CHAPTER II. 

 HARTING BEFORE THE CONQUEST. 



WHAT traces of former inhabitants did the Husseys 

 find here on their arrival ? 



The Britons and Romans clung to the heights, and 

 apparently cleared very little of the lower ground, 

 which was part of the great forest which the Britons 

 called Coit Andred, and which afterwards assumed a 

 Latinised form of Sylva Anderida. 



The conical hill of Tarberry, the barrow of the tor 

 or point, still carries its Celtic name.* It has a clear 

 trace of a foss on its south side, as though it had been 

 taken and occupied by the Romans. Seen from the 

 plain about South Harting, Tarberry assumes the form 

 of a ship turned keel upwards. On the western or 

 Petersfield side it has the shape of an inverted spoon ; 

 one local legend being that the Devil, rejecting the 

 scalding spoon from his " Punch bowl " at Hinde Head 

 in Surrey, threw it over to Sussex, when it alighted 

 here bowl upwards. Seen from the direction of East 

 Meon, Tarberry has the remarkable appearance of a 

 large altar stretching across the sunrise. On its height 

 there is supposed to have been a British settlement, 

 and perhaps a town. The misletoe still grows upon 

 some of its oldest trees, and at its foot, on the north 

 side, is a field called Cannicombe, which the Normans 

 seem to have christened Chene-combe, "the Coombe 

 of the Oak grove." There are also many yews here. 

 A very old oracular saying of double meaning is still 

 repeated by the peasants : 



Other British names are Caergasson (so registered in Caryll 

 accounts, now " Gastons "), Dyddyths, &c. : thus Treyford the 

 village on the road. 



C 



