eald, or the more distantly-related Belgae across the
Hayling tidal flats. Of these hill-forts, Hollingbury Castle, near
Brighton, may be taken as a typical example. Bronze weapons and other
implements of the bronze age are found in great numbers about Lewes in
particular (where the isolated height, now crowned by the Norman
Castle, must always have commanded the fertile river vale of the Ouse),
as well as at Chichester, Bognor, and elsewhere. But the great forest,
inhabited by savage beasts and still more terrible fiends, proved a
barrier to their northward extension. Even if they had cleared the
land, they could not have cultivated it with their existing methods;
and so it is only in a few spots near the upper river valleys that we
find any traces of outlying Celtic hamlets in the wilderness of the
Weald. Some kind of trade, however, must have existed between the Regni
and the other tribes of Britain, in order to supply them with the
bronze, whose component elements Sussex does not possess. Woolsonbury,
Westburton Hill, Clayton Hill, Wilmington, Hangleton Down, Plumpton
Plain, and many other places along the coast have yielded large numbers
of bronze implements; while the occurrence of the raw metal in lumps,
together with the finished weapons, at Worthing and Beachy Head, as
well the discovery of a mould for a socketed celt at Wilmington, shows
that the actual foundry work was performed in Sussex itself. A
beautiful torque from Hollingbury Castle attests the workmanship of the
Sussex founders. No doubt the tin was imported from Cornwall, while the
copper was probably brought over from the continent. Glass beads,
doubtless of Southern (perhaps Egyptian) manufacture, have also been
found in Sussex, with implements of the bronze age.

In the polished stone age, the county had been self-supporting, because
of its possession of flint. In the bronze age it was dependent upon
other places, through its non-possession of copper or tin. During the
former period it may have exported weapons from Cissbury; during the
latter, it must have imported the material of weapons from Cornwall and
Gaul.

Before the Romans came, the Celts of Britain had learned the use of
iron. Whether they ever worked the iron of the Weald, however, is
uncertain. But as the ores lie near the surface, as wood (to be made
into charcoal) for the smelting was abundant, and as these two facts
caused the Weald iron to be extensively employed in later times, it