Visitors to Eastbourne would hardly suspect that beneath their feet lie the remains of a more ancient Eastbourne, trod by the Romans, exploited by the Celts and farmed by Bronze Age man more than 5,000 years ago. Their predecessors, the earliest Neolithic farmers, settled in the area bringing with them the techniques of arable farming. It is even harder to imagine Gildredge Road and Old Orchard Road as being the stamping ground of elephants, or Terminus Road the home of hippopotamus and rhinoceros, or the area of the Winter Garden the foraging area for cattle, red and roe deer, wild pig and wolf. Yet this was the case approximately one million years ago when the area would have supported vegetation including the dwarf willow and the ginkgo tree (an example of this tree can be seen in a private garden in Trinity Trees). Field-banks of Iron Age and Roman fields are scattered over the Eastbourne downland giving us a tangible reminder of extensive corn-growing prior to the Roman occupation. During the Roman occupation life probably went on much the same as it had a century or so earlier. The area had been pro-Roman at the time of the occupation and it was only later in the Roman period, at the end of the fourth century, that evidence of military activity, such as the building of the Saxon Shore Fort at Pevensey, was to be seen.

Late Bronze Age celt, found
in Terminus Road in 1916

Farming continued as an important activity in the area as the Romans supplanted their regime upon existing Iron Age communities, further exploiting the land and setting up an overlord. On the coast, near the entrance to the present pier, the Romans built a very extensive villa in the first century with massive foundations which were revealed in 1851 at the time of the building of the sea wall, and this may have been the home of such an overlord.

Roman coin from the Bullock
Down hoard, found in 1899