Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/232

214 ON THE CITY OF ANDERIDA, OR ANDREDESCEASTER. Britons ; a>nd Mr. M. A. Lower alludes to the name being used in A.D. 792, and 1042. The second difficulty in the question arises from the present denuded condition of the adjacent country, whereas Andredecester must have been closely surrounded by wood. But though Pevensey Level now consists solely of rich grazing land, why might it not, nearly twelve centuries ago, have been a wide swampy forest ? The like alteration, it is ad- mitted, has happened with respect to the fen districts of Cambridgeshire and the contiguous counties ; neither are we absolutely without evidence, that the state of the low lands in this division of the kingdom may also once have been similar. The late Mr. E. J. Curties, M.P. for the county, has related in the Gentleman's Magazine^, his noticing on the sea shore upon the eastern side of the Level the stumps of various kinds of trees now common in our woods, some of them four or five feet high, with the roots yet firmly im- bedded in the earth ; plainly the remains of an ancient forest. Whether the same may be the case in Pevensey Level I am ignorant, but in some at least of the low lands eastward, on the borders of the streams, it was recently, and I have no doubt is now, not very unusual to disinter logs or timber from beneath the surface of what is now bare grass. Before concluding this portion of our discussion we may notice Dr. Tabor's objection, in the papers already alluded to, against Pevensey being Anderida, from the fact of so much old wall yet existing there. His idea must be, that such large and still perfect remains are inconsistent with the accounts delivered to us of the utter destruction of the city. But clearly this argument is inconclusive, because any entry within the fortification, which enabled the besiegers to accomplish the slaughter of the inhabitants, would sufficiently answer the description of the Chronicles, without requiring all the walls to be absolutely levelled with the ground ; which last feat indeed, especially considering that the construction was Roman, would be such a serious midertaking to the Saxon army, that we may safely imagine they would rest contented with having obtained possession of the city, without attempting farther injury to the "too, too solid" walls. On this particular, it may have been perceived already, I am completely at issue with Dr. X Chvoniclos of Pevensey, pp. 10, 11. i llorsfield's Sussex, vol. i. p. 427.