Highdole Hill lies on the South Downs above Telscombe in East Sussex, occupying chalk downland near the coast between Brighton and Newhaven. The site is one of a cluster of small Romano-British rural settlements on the eastern Downs, likely active from the late 1st through the 4th centuries AD, comprising enclosures, hut platforms and associated field systems characteristic of native farming communities that continued largely unchanged under Roman administration.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It forms part of the dense pattern of downland agrarian settlement that supplied grain and wool to the wider economy of the *civitas* of the Regni, and probably to the coastal markets and military supply networks of the Sussex coast. Individually modest, such sites are collectively significant for understanding the intensive Roman-period exploitation of the South Downs.
The site is known principally from earthwork survey, with visible platforms, lynchets and an integrated "Celtic" field system recorded as part of broader downland surveys (notably the Royal Commission and later National Mapping Programme work on the Sussex Downs); no substantial modern excavation has been published, and finds are limited to surface pottery scatters of Romano-British date.
Highdole Hill lies on the South Downs above Telscombe in East Sussex, occupying chalk downland near the coast between Brighton and Newhaven. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a settlement site from the Roman period in Britain.
Highdole Hill, Romano-British settlement is classified as a Roman settlement — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Beddingham (5.6 km), Hillfort, the possible remains of a Romano-Celtic temple and a group of three bowl barrows at Hollingbury (8.3 km), West Blatchington (11.9 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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