mesolithic and bronze age

Selmeston has been a favoured site for settlement since Mesolithic times. Early humans would have been attracted to this area because of its natural geographical features. It is a spring line village, which means that it contains a series of natural springs that provide drinking water. These springs are the result of Selmeston’s proximity to the South Downs, a huge block of porous chalk, and they are fed primarily by winter rain. Nearly every house built in the village before the 1960s has some form of well close by and it was only in the mid 1950s that running water was laid on to each property. There are no street lights or pavements and this gives the village some of its character, which is enhanced by verges and banks which are home to wild flowers and to daffodils that have been planted by residents. 

The village lies between two rivers, the Cuckmere and the Ouse and the line of the village, the present day Street, is the watershed between them. Early humans would have taken advantage of the rivers and there is evidence that they did so. Usually villages were formed on ‘through routes’ from one central location to another. The word ‘Street’ was often used as a marker for these settlements.

The earliest archaeological evidence we have of some sort of settlement in Selmeston dates from the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age (12,000-4,000 BC). The people at this time were ‘hunter gatherers’ and as such would have been seasonal visitors. A survey undertaken in 1933 revealed evidence of their presence in the area of the old sandpits, located close to the Church.  Pit dwellings and the remains of a cooking hearth were found, along with  over 130 microliths (slithers of flint ) probably used for arrow heads, spear tips and axes in the hunt for wild deer and oxen in the Wealden forests. 

Intermittent settlement appears to have continued throughout the Mesolithic period, which gradually ended with the beginning of  farming some 6,000 years ago. According to Cecil Curwen [1] in The Archaeology of Sussex, the sandpit near Selmeston Church is  ‘perhaps the most important and instructive of all the Mesolithic sites in Sussex, for here were found some of the dwelling pits of Mesolithic man’. Excavations of these pits in 1933 [2] yielded over 6,400 flints, including a large number of ‘pot boilers’. These are stones which were made red hot and dropped into water to heat it, or used for cooking food. It  seems that the pit went out of use and was almost filled with drifting sand, when it was reoccupied by some Neolithic people, who left behind a few scraps of pottery of the kind known as Peterborough ware or Neolthic ‘B.

Various items of pottery dating from the Neolithic (New Stone Age) and Bronze and Iron Ages have been found, some of which are on display at the Barbican House Museum in Lewes. 

[1] The Archaeology of Sussex, by E. Cecil Curwen (Methuen & Co Ltd 1937) 

[2] The Antiquaries Journal April 1934 (Vol. XIV, No.2) – A Late Mesolithic Site at Selmeston, Sussex, by J.G.D. Clark MA, PhD, FSA 

In 1936, the archaeologists Eliot and Cecil Curwen found fragments in the same area of a Late Bronze Age bucket urn  ‘with finger impressions on a raised band, and a portion of the rim of the same vessel, and with them one large calcined flint’. In the paper on their findings [3] they speculate that the users of the pottery might also have been responsible for the flints, and that the community might have started in Mesolithic times and lasted as a backwater throughout the subsequent Neolithic and Bronze Ages. They concluded that ‘the evidence as it stands is too slender to allow us to do more than raise the question: a distinct community living in “the bush” seems to be not inherently improbable.’ This is the first known instance of Selmeston being referred to as being ‘in the bush’ or as a ‘backwater’! 

[3] Sussex Archaeological Collections (Vol. LXXIX) – Late Bronze Age Ditches at Selmeston, by Eliot Curwen, FSA and E. Cecil Curwen, FSA   

See also:    

The Antiquaries Journal October 1934 (Vol. XIV, No.4) – A Flint Sickle-flake from Selmeston, Sussex, by Eliot Curwen, FSA and E. Cecil Curwen, FSA  

Sussex Archaeological Collections 123 (1985) – Recent Archaeological Research at Selmeston, East Susssex, by David Ruling et al.

In 1300, Edward 1 stayed at the Priory in Lewes.  Thirty-eight years earlier, his father had suffered a crushing defeat there at the hands of Simon de Montfort. With his court entourage, it is believed that he then progressed  past Firle and  through Alciston and Selmeston on his way to Michelham Priory. There have been no subsequent royal visits!  

The Black Death may have had an impact on the area at about this time (1300) and may be part of the reason that the village of Sidenore, which is referred to in the Domesday Book and may have been just to the North of Selmeston, had ‘disappeared‘ by 1350.

A Parish register was started in 1563, following a decree imposed by Thomas Cromwell in 1538 that all births, baptisms, weddings and burials be recorded. Inside the front cover of the first volume of the present register is written: “The Old Register which began in the year 1563 and continued to this present year 1667 is to be found in the Church Chest.” However, the old register seems to have been lost at some time after 1780, when Sir William Burrell made extracts from it as part of his Sussex Collections now at the British Museum.

In 1603 a bell was hung in the church tower with the inscription ‘ Joseph Haton made me’. A village fayre was recorded adjacent to the church in 1617, with that particular piece of land (extending up to the main road), taking on the name of Fairfields.