192 AN ENGLISH SHIRE. 



Brighton, may be taken as a typical example. Bronze 

 weapons and other implements of the bronze age are 

 found in great numbers about Lewes in particular (where 

 the isolated height, now crowned by the Norman Castle, 

 must always have commanded the "fertile river vale of 

 the Ouse), as well as at Chichester, Bognor, and else- 

 where. But the great forest, inhabited by savage beasts 

 and still more terrible fiends, proved a barrier to their 

 northward extension. Even if they had cleared the 

 land, they could not have cultivated it with their exist- 

 ing methods ; and so it is only in a few spots near the 

 upper river valleys that we find any traces of outlying 

 Celtic hamlets in the wilderness of the Weald. Some 

 kind of trade, however, must have existed between the 

 Eegni and the other tribes of Britain, in order to supply 

 them with the bronze, whose component elements Sussex 

 does not possess. W T oolsonbury,Westburton Hill, Clayton 

 Hill, Wilmington, Hangleton Down, Plumpton Plain, and 

 many other places along the coast have yielded large 

 numbers of bronze implements ; while the occurrence of the 

 raw metal in lumps, together with the finished weapons, at 

 Worthing and Beachy Head, as well the discovery of a 

 mould for a socketed celt at Wilmington, shows that 

 the actual foundry work was performed in Sussex itself. 

 A beautiful torque from Hollingbury Castle attests the 

 workmanship of the Sussex founders. No doubt the 

 tin was imported from Cornwall, while the copper was 

 probably brought over from the continent. Glass 

 beads, doubtless of Southern (perhaps Egyptian) manu- 

 facture, have also been found in Sussex, with implements 

 of the bronze age. 





