Hedges are not wrong, it is the old maps that are at fault and this 500 year “Mistake” applies to all the old Sussex maps that I’ve seen, 13th century hedges! Again, I used Dr Scott’s book, “Roman Ways in The Weald” by I.D. Margary in which he described how fields in Ripe had been shown to be marked out in Roman units, the Actus. Romans were the ONLY people to collect “LAND TAX”. They had surveyors and civil servants capable of drawing maps and the ability to record accounts, a system that lasted for 400 years! Through January I’d measured fields in actus with the vain hope of finding Roman hedges so when the 500-year “error” appeared in July the answer was clear. Romans made the first maps, which were then repeatedly copied for landowners. Perhaps Sussex is special, bounded on the south by high, chalk cliffs with only two ports in Roman Times, Pevensey and Shoreham, about 50 miles apart. With thick Wealden forest to the north as a barrier, there were few violent changes. Also Historians think that Romans were welcomed here.
Some 10 years later I came across two items. The “Tabula Peutineria” is now recognised as an authentic copy of a Roman map. It wasn’t always so but when Pompeii was uncovered in 1748 the lost villas and palaces buried in the eruption of A.D. 79 were seen to match the drawings on the old map. This confirmed the origin of the old map.”
Similarly, in Richard W. Bagshaw’s book “Roman Roads” p20, he mentions how William Stukely asked Charles J Bertram to copy a map Charles had described as a copy of a Roman map of Britain. It was completed and published in 1757. They both died in 1765 but in the next century they were criticised, Bertram for being a forger, Stukely for being fooled. But Bagshaw writes, “Most worrying of all, some aspects of “De Situ” appear to have been prophetic”. It would give me great pleasure to reinstate Bertram and Stukely.
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