Pevensey and Birling Gap

After our bacon and eggs we set off to see the castle.

First stop was St Nicholas' church. The Church’s origins can be traced to the Roman occupation of Britain and is built on the original site of a Saxon or Priory church dating from the 5th century, which at the time would have overlooked the sea, now some 1/2 mile distant. The Church we see today was built in its present form in the medieval period, between 1205 and 1216.

Pevensey castle was up next. Pevensey Castle is a medieval castle and former Roman Saxon Shore fort. When it was built it was right on the edge of the marshes and sea. Built around 290 AD and known to the Romans as Anderitum, the fort appears to have been the base for a fleet called the Classis Anderidaensis. The reasons for its construction are unclear; long thought to have been part of a Roman defensive system to guard the British and Gallic coasts against Saxon pirates, it has more recently been suggested that Anderitum and the other Saxon Shore forts were built by a usurper in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent Rome from reimposing its control over Britain. The impressive Roman wall remains around most of the castle and originally would have been much higher.

Part of the remaining moat.

 

Geoff inspecting the all important well inside the castle walls.

 

Anderitum fell into ruin following the end of the Roman occupation but was reoccupied in 1066 by the William the Conqueror and the Normans, for whom it became a key strategic bulwark. A stone keep and fortification was built within the Roman walls and faced several sieges. Although its garrison was twice starved into surrender, it was never successfully stormed. The castle was occupied more or less continuously until the 16th century, apart from a possible break in the early 13th century when it was slighted (deliberately damaged to prevented it falling into use by enemies). It had been abandoned again by the late 16th century and remained a crumbling, partly overgrown ruin until it was acquired by the state in 1925.

Geoff standing by just some of the the huge balls found in the moat. These would have been used in the Seige machine or Trebouchet in many attempts to tear down the walls.

There were 2 dungeons -both awful. One they think was an Oubliette where prisoners were lowered down into a really deep hole and often left there.

 

What they think it looked like in Norman times.

 

Pevensey Castle was reoccupied between 1940 and 1945, during the Second World War, when it was garrisoned by units from the Home Guard, the British and Canadian armies and the United States Army Air Corps. Machine-gun posts were built into the Roman and Norman walls to control the flat land around Pevensey and guard against the threat of a German invasion. They were left in place after the war and can still be seen today.

View of the village street.

We had lunch at the local Tea gardens which was lovely.

In the afternoon we exlored the amazing chalk cliffs. This represented one of my major disappointments last visit as it was so misty when we came you couldn't see your hand in front of you. Not so today!!

It was easy to imagine the planes in the last war flying back over these massive cliffs and knowing they were home. They would certainly make you want to defend your country as well.

 

 

You walk up on the ridge and can walk for miles along the South Downs path. Most awesome 360 degree scenery on a day like to today.

The chalk formation was laid down under the sea in the Upper Cretaceous period, and was later uplifted at around the same time as the Alps were formed. This is how it happens according to dicoveringfossils.co.uk

The chalk comes from lime mud, which accumulates on the sea floor in the right conditions. This is then transformed into rock by geological processes: as more sediment builds up on top, and as the sea floor subsides, the lime mud is subjected to heat and pressure which removes the water and compacts the sediment into rock. If chalk is subject to further heat and pressure it becomes marble.

The lime mud is formed from the microscopic skeletons of plankton, which rain down on the sea floor from the sunlit waters above. The Coccolithophores are the most important group of chalk forming plankton. Each miniscule individual has a spherical skeleton called a cocosphere, formed from a number of calcareous discs called coccoliths. After death, most coccospheres and coccoliths collapse into their constituent parts.

 

 

 

 

The light house had to be moved back as the cliff is continually crumbling away and they thought it was going to fall over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A beautiful scene on our way to Arundel.

Tonight we stayed in a souless Comfort Inn at the junction of 2 motorways near Arundel. Although you wouldn't know it by looking out of our window.