Anderida
ANDERIDAis mentioned in the Notitia Imperiias 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 districtAnderida 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; antredmeaning 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, Andredesleage(Andredslea), and Andredesweald(the Wealdof Andred), are the later names.
Of the particular stationso called in the Notitia, the determination is difficult. Pevenseyhas 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]Now several km inland on a hillock overlooking the Pevensey levels, which in the Roman period provided a navigable approach. Apart from a few fragments of tiles stamped CL BR (Classis Britannica) of the 2d or 3d c. A.D., the principal occupation began soon after 340 with the construction of a stone-walled fort belonging to the series of Saxon Shore Forts built to protect the S and E coasts of Britain from pirate raids. The fort is mentioned in the Notitia Dignitatum as Anderido or Anderida and was garrisoned by a Numerus Abulcorum. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the inhabitants of the fort were massacred by Saxon troops in 491. The site was used as a castle during the Norman Conquest and remained sporadically in use until WW II.
The Roman wall, enclosing an irregular oval-shaped area of ca. 4 ha, is 3.6 in wide and built of flint and sandstone rubble faced with coursed greensand and ironstone blocks. Forward-projecting D-shaped bastions, integral with the wall, were spaced so as to provide covering fire to protect all approaches. The main gate lay on the E side between two close-spaced bastions: it was a simple opening 3 m wide, flanked by rectangular guard chambers of which only the foundations now survive. There were two other gates, an S-shaped postern in the N wall and a simple opening through the W wall. Traces of timber buildings have been discovered in the interior.
BIBLIOGRAPHYL. F. Salzman, Excavations on the site of the Roman Fortress at Pevensey (1907); id., Excavations at Pevensey: second report (1908); J. P. Bushe-Fox, “Some Notes on Roman Coastal Defences,” JRS 22 (1932) 60ff; C. Peers, Pevensey Castle (1960).
B. W. CUNLIFFE