This website created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.
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The view from Muntham Burial Mound in May 1999. The prehistoric trackway from North End to Chanctonbury Ring can be seen in the distance. The trail wends its way up the downs to the left of the clump of beech trees on the skyline line that mark Chanctonbury Ring. |
THE PREHISTORIC TRACK TO CHANCTONBURY
Text copyright Valerie Martin 1999
Originally published in Along the Furlong in March 2001.
On the skyline above Findon I can see two famous Rings. These landmarks stand 2½ miles apart as the crow flies. They are within sight of each other, perched on the heights of the downs. To the south-east of Findon is the Iron Age Fort of Cissbury Ring, and further away, north-east of the village, lies Chanctonbury Ring (reference TQ 140080).
The South Down Way stretches for eighty miles along the tops of the hillside
from Beachy Head in the East to the Hampshire border,
passes right beside Chanctonbury Ring. It is known that this is a
path that was trodden by men from time immemorial and at a spot about half
a mile from the actual Ring and on the end of the amphitheatre is a
crossroads, where seven footpaths come in from all points of the compass.
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A prehistoric path, starting at North End in Findon, winds its way up the downland above the village. It finally passes the dew-pond and continues to the summit of Chanctonbury Ring. This dew-pond, to the west of the Ring, was restored by the Society of Sussex Downsmen in 1970, and is now managed and maintained by them.
The Ring is the site of one of the lesser Iron Age hill forts in the area and the track was used for many centuries linking Chanctonbury with the Findon area.
At the time of the Roman occupation there was a Roman temple at the centre of the area we now call Chanctonbury Ring. An excavation conducted in the early years of the twentieth century revealed that in spite of the roots of the trees having greatly disturbed the remains, it was in fact a sunken temple complete with a court. This may or may not have been a temple to Mithras, the early Persian God whose worship became popular to the Romans.
The hill was called "Chankbury" until the late 18th century and remained treeless until the year 1760. The name "Ring" refers to the circular earthwork on the eminence, not the beeches. which were planted around the ditch of an Iron Age Campo in 1760 by Charles Goring, who lived in Weston House, a 16th century house at the foot of the hill.
Continue if you would like to read An Anglo-Saxon's Buried Hoard.
Back to Chanctonbury Ring Index
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E-mail: valeriemartin@findonvillage.com |
