ANDERIDA
(Pevensey) Sussex, England.
Now several km inland on a hillock overlooking the
Pevensey levels, which in the Roman period provided a
navigable approach. Apart from a few fragments of tiles
stamped CL BR (Classis Britannica) of the 2d or 3d c.
A.D., the principal occupation began soon after 340 with
the construction of a stone-walled fort belonging to the
series of Saxon Shore Forts built to protect the S and
E coasts of Britain from pirate raids. The fort is mentioned in the
Notitia Dignitatum as Anderido or Anderida
and was garrisoned by a Numerus Abulcorum. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the inhabitants of the
fort were massacred by Saxon troops in 491. The site
was used as a castle during the Norman Conquest and
remained sporadically in use until WW II.
The Roman wall, enclosing an irregular oval-shaped
area of ca. 4 ha, is 3.6 in wide and built of flint and
sandstone rubble faced with coursed greensand and
ironstone blocks. Forward-projecting D-shaped bastions,
integral with the wall, were spaced so as to provide covering fire to protect all approaches. The main gate lay on
the E side between two close-spaced bastions: it was a
simple opening 3 m wide, flanked by rectangular guard
chambers of which only the foundations now survive.
There were two other gates, an S-shaped postern in the
N wall and a simple opening through the W wall. Traces
of timber buildings have been discovered in the interior.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. F. Salzman,
Excavations on the site
of the Roman Fortress at Pevensey (1907); id.,
Excavations at Pevensey: second report (1908); J. P. Bushe-Fox,
“Some Notes on Roman Coastal Defences,”
JRS 22
(1932) 60ff; C. Peers,
Pevensey Castle (1960).
B. W. CUNLIFFE
