Roman "Count of the Saxon Shore" and one of the last strongholds of
Rome in Britain. The melancholy tale of the overthrow of ancient
civilization in this corner of England by the barbarous Saxon invaders
is summed up in the terse words of their own chronicle--"They slew all
that dwelt therein, nor was there henceforth one Briton left." The name
"Andredes Weald" is derived from the British--An tred--"No houses," and
it correctly described the surrounding country at the time of the Roman
occupation. The great Weald or forest actually extended from the coast
to the Thames valley, broken only by the "Old Road" along the side of
the North Downs, traversed by far-off ancestors of ours whose feelings
as they gazed fearfully down into the depths of the primeval wood must
have been on a plane with those of the earliest African explorers in
the land of Pygmies. Here were the very real beginnings of those
countless tales of Gnome and Fairy--ferocious tribe and gentle
tribe--with which our folk-lore abounds.

[Illustration: JEVINGTON.]

As to the existence of a British town here before the coming of the
Romans nothing is known, but that Pevensey Bay witnessed the landing of
Julius Caesar is tolerably certain, and here the custodians of Britain
erected a great stronghold of whose walls we shall see the remnants as
we first enter the castle. In 490 Ella besieged the city and, as quoted
above, put it to fire and sword in effectual fashion; from this period
therefore must be dated the foundations of the South Saxon kingdom.
After upwards of five hundred years another conqueror appeared on the
old Roman wall. On the twenty-eighth September 1066 William I landed,
stumbled and fell, and "clutched England with both hands." Pevensey
(Peofn's Island) was given to Robert of Mortain, and he it was who
built the massive castle of the "Eagle" which we see rising inside the