The Romans

In 43 A.D. The Emperor Claudius of Rome sent an army to invade Britain.
Roman Britain had begun.

When the Romans invaded Britain they had to defend it against constant attack from Celtic tribes . To do this, the Romans built forts around Britain for the soldiers to live in, many in Sussex.

At first they were built of wood, later they were built of stone, of the Roman soldiers Curwen wrote ‘In the first place, very few of the personnel of the Roman armies or their officers were by birth inhabitants of the City of Rome or even Italians; racially they included all the people from the then known world, French, Germans and Spanish, Arabs and Africans, all bound together politically as Romans’

The remains of a Roman farmhouse have been found at the corner of Preston Road and Springfield Road. This site was excavated in 1877.

West Blatchington site in Hove, reveals evidence of occupation during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, later became a Roman Farm House, which now lies under Amberley Drive, no fewer than eleven corn drying kilns were found scattered over the area of the farm house, which was dated about A.D. 150 to A.D. 270. among the iron objects found at the site were a key and two pruning hooks, two carpenter bits, a lynch-pin, a staple, a washer, the head of a javelin.

A glass Hanging Lamp was found along with four large pots (one of which contained a lamp) in a field (in Wild Park) Brighton.

Many Roman-Brighton finds, and structures have been found in the Brighton area.

At Springfield Road, a small Villa was partially excavated during the late 19th and 20th centuries.

An amber cup carved from a single piece of amber, together with a dagger, found on the site of Palmeira Avenue, Hove.