In six months all was over, and had the Saxon thane been here again he
would have seen another sight. William returning to his Normandy, Conqueror
of the Saxons, founder of a royal dynasty. Had there been a spectatorin
the watchtower of the Roman walls of Pevensey he could have looked out on
the battlefield of Hastings where Saxon England died and Norman England
came to birth.
Before going on with the story of Pevensey I would like to point out that
although the story is told as the Battle of Hastings 1066, it was in fact
fought at the Battle of Senlac hill, in the town now called Battle. Why
it is called the Battle of Hastings I do not know, perhaps some scholar
with more knowledge on this subject could perhaps enlighten me on this anomally?
From the outer bailey the towers of the castle still stand firm. Here
the north (foreground) and east towers strike an imposing stance, their
only battle now is against time.
The imposing walls , which in places reach a height of 28ft (9mtrs) to
the parapet walk and are 12ft (3.7mtrs) thick. They are strongly built of
flint rubble, faced with sandstone, bonded with red brick or ironstone,
and set up on a chalk-filled framework of wooden beams which in turn rests
upon a layer of flints embedded in puddled clay. Except for a large collapse
on the south side and a smaller one on the north, the circuit of the Roman
walls is only broken by the addition of the Norman castle in the south-eastern
corner of the enclosure.
At the west is the main entrance, flanked by two rectangular towers and
a rectangular gatehouse, and mid-way in the line of the north wall is a
small curved postern gate. The present breach in the east wall is modern,
but in Roman times there was a gateway here which gave access to the harbour,
and there was probably a fourth gateway in the collapsed length of the south
wall.
The defensive works consisted of an embattled parapet with a walk which
can still be traced, and a series of rounded external bastions bonded into
the walls and placed irregularly, so that from each pair a straight sector
of the wall could be controlled. For this reason there are more bastions
on the curved walls at the east and west than on the straighter walls at
the north and south. The detailed structure of the walls may best be seen
on the exterior face of the north section. Both here, and elsewhere, valuable
preservation work was carried out by the Ministry of Works, especially in
the excavation and turfing of the ditches.
The Roman east gate appears much as it did in Roman times. It has been
rebuilt both in the Middle Ages and in the late ninteenth century.
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