THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — these Findon Chronicles are created by Valerie Martin and contain scenes from her home village of Findon,
West Sussex, U.K.    Everyday stories about real people.

THE MYSTERY OF THE LOST VILLAGES OF PARK BROW  (Ref: TQ 1508)

click to enlarge images

Copyright Valerie Martin 2009

At the end of 2009 I set out to unravel the intriguing conundrum of the three separate lost villages of Park Brow.  I will attempt to give you a diary of the events over the centuries on the downland up to the present day...

Park Brow is the chalk spur of land to the north east of Cissbury Ring and is a peaceful hillside with no immediate indication that people once lived there in the Middle Bronze Age.  

I discovered that in the 1920s (prior to modern methods of deep farming destroyed the evidence of its existence) a small settlement had been excavated.   

In all probability this photograph dates from the 1920s at the time of the excavations.   The stony track wends its way east from the north side of Cissbury Ring.... passing Canada Barn... and on to Park Brow the site of the Middle Bronze Age settlement in the distance.  

Today, virtually nothing survives to indicate the presence of homes and the farming of fields spanning the several centuries from the Bronze Age, through the Iron Age and on into Roman times.   If we are lucky, vague clues come down to us today from the past in the form of lighter strips in the soil after ploughing at certain times of the year.  On occasions darker strips in growing crops crops reveal the position of the embankments at the edge of primitive man's former fields.

This photograph is of a similar vintage to above and at the time of the excavations.   It is taken from the Park Brow area looking westwards ... back towards Cissbury Ring.

click to enlarge images

BRONZE AGE.  A total of eight sites of circular Bronze Age shelters were unearthed at Park Brow.  Each of these in their day measured 20 ft. to 30 ft. across.  The early settlers were canny enough to dig into the hillside to provide their accommodation with level chalk floors.  

The walls were constructed of wattle and a daub was applied inside and out.   This was made from a mixture of clay, crushed chalk, flint and grass.    Finally, the huts were thatched with straw and thus turned into warm, weatherproofed homes with hearths at their centre for cooking and heating. The Park Brow villagers discovered over time that chalk pits dug inside their houses gave an early form of refrigerator.....cool storage places during the summer months!  

The surrounding Findon countryside provided the rest of the villagers' needs.   Archaeologists of the 1920s found that pigs, goats and oxen were reared for meat and milk.   Animal bones formed implements for ancient man to work with.   Saucepans, loom weights and grinding stones indicate that the farmers had a variety of craft skills. They modelled and fired clay, planted and ground grain for bread and weaved with wool from their small horned flocks.

Trading with nearby communities supplied bronze axes and spears for hunting the wild deer and boar that roamed the Findon area.    Butchered animal bones are the evidence left behind.  

In 1973 the skeletons of two adults and a child were turned up by a rather surprised workman digging foundations for a fence near a track way leading from nearby Cissbury Ring to Chanctonbury Ring.   No, a modern day murder investigation was not instigated back in 1973.... sorry to disappoint you.....the remains were deemed to have been inhabitants of the area in the distant past.....the Bronze Age.    They could have been neighbours of the Park Brow villagers.

600 BC.  The Park Brow Bronze Age settlement came to a turbulent end around 600 BC. This was when the first Celtic people arrived from the Continent and brought their knowledge of iron making.    Imagine the scene of mayhem.   Some of the invaders appeared from the sea and decided to settle at Park Brow and proceeded to burn down the settlement on the hillside.   They promptly decided to make camp further up the slope.     What was different about this new settlement?

IRON AGE.  The design of the Park Brow Iron Age Village was to be significant from its predecessor on the hillside.  The new occupants constructed long houses at Park Brow on a larger scale, though still with wattle and daub walls.   A strong palisade of timber planted firmly in a trench encircled and fortified this new community giving it a completely different appearance.  

One house was completely excavated and was 50 ft. long and 20 ft. wide.   The roof was arranged on ten pairs of timber posts set into the chalk, in two lines some 8 ft.    Inside this house were strange smoothed-out hollows (perhaps sleeping berths?)  The house would have accommodated about fifty inhabitants, suggesting a more communal  life-style.

The Iron Age farmsteads of Park Brow looked westwards over towards the Iron Age Fort at Cissbury Ring and trading no doubt continued with other settlements such as those at nearby Findon Park, Muntham Court and further west at Harrow Hill.   Artefacts indicate that pottery was now of a higher quality and design...... but corn grinding, weaving and the use of storage pits was much the same as in the previous Bronze Age community.

"What did they do with their dead?" .....the next enigma to present itself.  I have only found one fragment of evidence saying that two cremations were discovered in early Iron Age vessels at Park Brow.   

The nearest Iron Age site where some form of religious ritual activity was conducted was at the Iron Age Findon Park settlement.   Here the skull of an ox was found on the floor of one of the pits in the centre of a closely set ring of flints.   This could perhaps suggest some kind of religious beliefs from the Iron Age onwards.  

An ancient surviving track way at Park Brow holds its own mystery.   This has survived modern farming methods and runs down the ridge at Park Brow just as it did in prehistoric days.  Unfortunately, it is  on private land.  The fenced enclosure around the Iron Age settlement defined part of the edge of the track and therefore it is at least as old (and could be even older) than the village itself.   

Another baffling brain-teaser prevailed in the 1920s.   Further along the track from the village, a large pit surrounded by an embankment was visible.   The archaeologists made the mistake of thinking it was a meeting place!   It was, in fact, a pond designed to catch rain water flowing down the track. 

300 BC. It was around 300 BC ....give or take a year or two....that the  Park Brow Iron Age Village was abandoned for a new site lower down at the southern edge of the ridge to a point below the 250 ft. contour line at O.S. reference
TQ 1505.   Could the supply of water have been the reason for the move?

ROMANS.  Things were now looking up.  Life continued at the settlement and went on much in the same way as before until the Romans arrived and then life improved.   The village included five luxurious and comfortable houses of sophistication over the decades, measuring some 25 ft. to 30 ft.   

The roofing had now taken a step forward and boasted red tiles fastened with iron nails.

The walls were still of wattle and daub but were plastered.    Another improvement was the painting of the interiors in cheery colours or red, cream and grey.

Glass from windows and rather extraordinarily..... even a door key have been unearthed and it is thought that wooden planking was used for flooring.   Judging by the contents of rubbish pits, the villagers were considerably more well off under Roman rule. They owned fine decorated pottery, both imported and local.... and wore brooches, bracelets and rings.

500 AD.  The end of the simple life of the Park Brow communities was in sight.   When the Roman legions departed in the fifth century, Park Brow was finally deserted.   The new Saxon invaders preferred to settle away from the high downland.  They had no use for the Park Brow hillside and left the barren downland with no vestige of the earlier habitation.

Continue if you would like to read about The Neolithic Village above Findon at High Salvington
 

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.