ANCIENT 

 EARTHWORKS 



INTRODUCTION 



KENT, the main gateway of Britain from the Continent, might 

 well be expected to yield abundant evidence of its occupation 

 in early days, but so far as defensive works are concerned 

 the expectation is not realized, and we look in vain for more 

 than fragments of banks and trenches of long pre-Roman date ; indeed 

 we find few works of note appertaining to times anterior to the days 

 of feudalism, when the castles of which Kent possesses such valuable 

 examples were constructed. 



The paucity of early remains may be attributed to various causes — 



1. A large portion of the district was included within the area of 

 the dense forest of Andred, a tract of country long uninhabited, stretch- 

 ing from the west through the Wealds of Sussex and Kent. 



2. The resistless action of the sea has changed and shifted the 

 divisions between land and water on the east and south-east of Kent, 

 and destroyed much of the chalk headlands of the northern and north- 

 eastern cliffs, thus, perchance, carrying away promontory fortresses such 

 as we find where the coast-walls of England are of harder rock. 



3. Between the ridge of the North Downs and the present line of 

 the Thames numerous evidences of early occupation have been dis- 

 covered in excavations, but all traces of them on the low-lying land near 

 the waterside are now buried under some feet of silt. 



4. Diggings on the sides of the Watling Street, that great highway 

 of the Roman and later conquerors, have proved the large extent to 

 which its neighbourhood was occupied, but neither along it nor on 

 the earlier trackway, known as the Pilgrim Way, do we find much 

 evidence of earthworks ; for just as Kent was the first to receive those 

 civilizing influences which came from the East, so through Saxon and 

 all subsequent days it has been (excepting in the Weald where the 

 development was late) one of the most cultivated of England's counties, 

 consequently agricultural operations, road making, building, etc., have 

 combined to destroy the rampart and fosse used in early defence. 



Notwithstanding the attention which in recent years has been 

 devoted to the study of ancient earthworks and defensive enclosures in 

 Britain, it is impossible to classify them in perfect chronological order ; 

 nor is there any hope of accomplishing this desirable end until careful 

 and scientific exploration is made and properly recorded.^ 



' Hasted gives us a warning wMch is a propos. After referring to Philemon Holland's words, in his 

 edition of Camden's Britannia, relating to an entrenchment at West Wickham, the Kentish historian 

 says : ' In the same manner there are many other places in this county, which may seem to have been 



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