186 AN ENGLISH SHIRE. 



Proper and the combes of the Downs were naturally 

 predestined to form a single Celtic kingdom, a single Saxon 

 principality, and a single English shire. 



It will be observed that this description leaves wholly 

 out of consideration the strip of country about Hastings, 

 Eye, and Winchelsea. It does so intentionally. That 

 strip of country does not belong to Sussex in the same 

 intimate and strictly necessary manner as the rest of the 

 county. It probably once formed the seat of a small 

 independent community by itself; and though there 

 were good and obvious reasons why it should become 

 finally united to Sussex rather than to Kent, it may be 

 regarded as to some extent a debateable island between 

 them. For an island it practically was in early times. 

 At Pevensey Bay the Weald ran down into the sea by a 

 series of swamps and bogs still artificially drained by 

 dykes and sluices. On the other side, the Eomney 

 marshes formed a similar though wider stretch of tidal 

 flats, reclaimed and drained at a far later period, partly 

 through the agency of the long shingle bank thrown up 

 round the low modern spit of Dungeness. Between 

 them, the Hastings cliffs rose high above marsh and sea. 

 In their rear, the Weald forest covered the ridge ; so that 

 the Hastings district (still a separate rape or division of 

 the county) formed a sort of smaller Sussex, divided, 

 like the larger one, from all the rest of England by a 

 semicircular belt of marsh, forest, and marsh once more. 

 These are the main elements out of which the history of 

 the county is made up. 



How far such conditions may have acted upon the very 

 earliest human inhabitants of Sussex the pakeolithiq 





