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

THE PREHISTORIC TRACK AT CISSBURY RING

Copyright Valerie Martin 2010

What is a prehistoric track?    It is a term used to describe a roadway used before recorded history.   The human race as we know it is relatively recent on earth and was certainly before anyone recorded what they were doing.   

Therefore, I will now have to use a bit of imagination for a peep into antiquity.    It is obviously difficult to fix with any certainty a date in prehistoric times but I am suggesting a period of Neolithic origin circa 4,000 - 2,000 BC.   A most fascinating picture can be conjured up from the remains of a prehistoric trail trod for what ever reason by homo sapien groups and their animals passing the eastern side of Cissbury Ring.  

Where were these Ancients travelling to and from?   The probable route starts at Beachy Head and heads west to our area..... on through Hampshire and on Salisbury Plain.    Were they perhaps on important missions to barter with other tribes the raw materials of flints they had mined?   Some form of communication was in existence.   The recipient of each axe was apparently expected to grind and polish and an organised state of society of early selling and receiving was in operation.  They were by no means uncivilised barbarians leading a precarious and not thought out existence.

The crossing of the river (the River Adur to us) near the Sussex Pad Hotel in the time of the Ancients was most likely by a ford — but by Roman times it was said to have been by a ferry.   This crossing was of some importance as being the lowest on the river and was also the crossing point of the prehistoric track before heading to Lancing Clump and on to Cissbury Ring. 

Approaching the hillside we know as Cissbury Ring the prehistoric track followed the lower route on the northern escarpment.    I will give a short explanation here.  At the beginning of the Second World War, two pathways descended Cissbury Ring on this side of the gradient. The lower was the Prehistoric Track and the upper was converted during the war into a road for vehicles, such as tanks on manoeuvres and came to be called the Tank Road.

Since the 1940s these have both been mistakenly and confusingly called the "Tank Road"  because of wrongly both being thought to be ascended by army tanks.    For identification purposes the lower is the Prehistoric one and the upper the Tank Road.

The trail trod by the Ancients then wended onwards across the Findon landscape to the gap at North End in Findon Village.   It then skirted its way northwards to the familiar sight we call Chanctonbury Ring.     The prehistoric trail may have had now unknown intersections on the way to other settlements.... but the whereabouts are now lost in time.

Continue if you would like to read about The Neolithic Village at Cissbury.

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