ANDERIDA
ANDERIDA is mentioned in the
Notitia Imperii as the station of a detachment of Abulci (numerus Abulcorum); and as part of the Littus Saxonicum.
In the Anglo-Saxon period it has far greater prominence. The
district Anderida coincided with a well-marked natural division of the island, the Wealds of Sussex and Kent.
The gault and green-sand districts belonged to it also, so that it reached from Alton to Hythe, and from Eastbourne to the north of Maidstone--Romney Marsh being especially excluded from it. Thirty miles from N. to S., and 120 from E. to W. are the dimensions given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ad Ann. 893), and this is not far from the actual distance.
The name is British;
antred meaning
uninhabited, and the form in full being
Coed Andred, the uninhabited wood. Uninhabited it was not; in the central ridge, mining industry was applied to the iron ore of Tilgate Forest at a very early period.
The stiff clay district (the oak-tree clay of the geologists) around it, however, may have been the resort of outlaws only. Beonred, when expelled from Mercia, took refuge in the
Andredeswald, from the north-western frontier; and the Britons who, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of A. D. 477, fled from Aella and his son, did the same from the south. Of
Anderida, as a district, Andredes
leage (Andreds
lea), and Andredes
weald (the
Weald of Andred), are the later names.
Of the particular
station so called in the
Notitia, the determination is difficult.
Pevensey has the best claim; for remains of Roman walls are still standing.
The neighbourhood of
Eastbourne, where there are Roman remains also, though less considerable, has the next best. Camden favoured
Newenden; other writers having preferred
Chichester. It is safe to say that Anderida never was a Saxon town at all. In A.D. 491, Aella and his son Cissa “slew all that dwelt therein, so that not a single Briton was left.” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ad ann.)
[
R.G.L]
