The Roman Road, Rowhook (Sussex) to Farley Heath (Surrey)

Abstract

A stretch of about four yards of the Roman Stane Street, or rather the core of it, which I have recently laid bare at Alfoldean, near Slinfold, Sussex, was made up of two layers of biggish slabs of local stone set in sand on top of the local clay. The surface of the Roman road had been used in the make-up of the modern road (1810), but plenty of it is scattered about in the fields, and i t is quite obvious that it was composed of three elements: chert from the lower greensand at Petworth and Fittleworth, flints from the South Downs, and sea-pebbles from the south coast, probably Shoreham. This definite datum, and the knowledge that near Rowhook on the line of the Rowhook-Farley Heath road, as marked on the Ordnance map, was a field traditionally called ‘Stone Field’, prompted me to test the line for road-metal, after having obtained permission from Mr. Lee Steere, of Ockley, and a series of friendly landowners and farmers.