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The western Rother (in contrast to the Rother of East Sussex) begins as a series of springs around Empshott, 2km (1.2 miles) south of Selborne, famous as the home of the Reverend Gilbert White (1720-1793), the insatiably curious parson naturalist and fieldwork pioneer. The title of his best-known work – The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) – suggests that he would have approved of the multi-disciplinary approach adopted by the editors of The Rother Valley (see ‘Further reading’ below), which brings archaeology, hydrology, geology, and ecology together to examine human use and its impact on this landscape.
The study area consists of 360 km2 (139 square miles) of land, taking in the river and all its tributaries. The valley lies entirely within the South Downs National Park, but is geologically and topographically very different from the much-studied chalk landscape to the south. The upper Rother, from Selbourne downstream to Petersfield, sees the river flow from aquifers through a steep, wooded valley dominated by the East Hampshire Hangers – a line of hills with sheer scarps crowned by ancient beech woodland, marking the eastern edge of the Hampshire Downs and its boundary with the Western Weald. This is a landscape rich in biodiversity and of ancient spring-line villages, mill buildings, and weirs.
The middle Rother, between Petersfield and Midhurst, flows through arable farmland and villages, and is a landscape of large private estates, with the remains of yet more mill buildings, leets, ponds, and weirs. Otter populations are reported to be on the rise there – a sign of a healthy river system with the habitats and food to support their lifecycle.
The lower Rother, from Midhurst to Hardham, flows partly through a mixture of open and largely undeveloped floodplain belonging to the interlinked estates of Cowdray, Barlavington, and Leconfield, but also through highly fertile and intensively farmed fields used for large-scale salad and vegetable production.
Prehistoric pathways
By contrast with the wildflower-rich, fast-draining, and relatively young chalk downs, the Rother Valley is made up of clay and greensand, overlain in places by deposits of sand and gravel, brought there when the Rother was a substantially bigger river during interglacial warm periods. It is on these gravel terraces that scatters of palaeolithic axes, blades, and flakes have been found, probably representing prehistoric hunting expeditions.
The high points in this landscape are at Butser Hill (270m/886ft) and Black Down (275m/902ft) at the head of the river; the lowest point (2m/6.5ft) is at the junction of the Rother (30km/19 miles from its source) with the tidal River Arun at Hardham, where a weir prevents the ingress of salt water. The major classes of land use in the catchment are pasture (39%), deciduous woodland (22%), arable (22%), coniferous woodland (6%), and built-up areas (7%), with small patches of heathland that are of great archaeological and ecological value, as the ‘People of the Heath’ archaeological project at Petersfield Heath has demonstrated.
This four-year community project (2014-2018), hosted by Petersfield Museum and directed by George Anelay of West Sussex Archaeology and Dr Stuart Needham, involved excavating 14 of the 21 surviving Bronze Age barrows on Petersfield Heath. In the process, evidence of much longer-term use of this landscape was discovered. Mesolithic flints were found widely across the Heath, concentrated on two ridges, one of which included a fire pit dated to 7349-7050 calBC.
Elsewhere within the catchment area, Mesolithic activity was concentrated at places with springs and wetlands near the headwaters of the Rother’s tributaries. These would have attracted deer, boar, and aurochs. Charcoal evidence suggests that the vegetation there was burned deliberately to create open areas that would have made it easier to hunt grazing animals.
In the catchment area as a whole, earlier Mesolithic (8500-6800 calBC) flints have been found at 87 main locations but later Mesolithic microliths at only seven sites. The decline in activity after 6800 calBC might reflect changing patterns of seasonal mobility, with coastal wetlands becoming a more important food resource as post-glacial sea levels began to stabilise, creating the conditions for fish and shellfish to thrive.
The advent of Neolithic farming saw marked changes in the chalklands to the south but less so in the Rother Valley, where the evidence suggests only small-scale – and perhaps shifting – agriculture related mainly to animal herding, rather than crop husbandry and settlement. Where concentrations of Neolithic artefacts have been found, they coincide with sites of Mesolithic activity. This might be explained by their locations close to springs, but Martin Bell, in his chapter on landscape archaeology, believes that such persistent sites could also result from their location along frequently used routeways and the crossing places of such routes.
There is much more evidence for Bronze Age activity, with no fewer than 553 probable barrows. Stuart Needham and George Anelay have argued that the barrows in the Petersfield Heath cemetery are aligned on the midwinter solstice when the setting sun disappears in a prominent notch between Butser Hill and War Down, 4km (2.5 miles) to the south-west. Other barrows in the area show a cosmological alignment and so do the earliest fields in the Rother Valley. Ditches and banks, like the one on Glatting Beacon, above Bignor, which has been securely dated to the later Bronze Age, run at right angles to the crest of the down, dividing the landscape into long narrow strips that could have played a part in controlling transhumance routes connecting different landscape types and environments. Such seasonal movements are historically documented in the early medieval period, but they may well have earlier origins.
Similarly, the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age enclosure at Harting Beacon, dated by pottery to 900-600 BC, has been interpreted as a gathering place for seasonal grazing. This and other hillforts and enclosures indicate greater use of the valley’s resources in the Iron Age, including the production of greensand querns at Lodsworth. Their distribution shows that the querns were transported via the Rother to the Arun and then northwards to the Wey catchment and the mid-Thames region. From the 4th century BC and into the Roman period, rotary querns were produced there on an industrial scale and exported up to 165km (103 miles) from their source.
Roman roads, medieval manors, and post-medieval production
Under Roman occupation, roads rather than river transport became a major factor in the valley’s settlement history. Stane Street, linking Chichester to London, crosses the chalk escarpment above Bignor, then descends to the Arun crossing at Hardham, which is the location for a mansio or waystation for official travellers. Another road linking Chichester to Silchester crosses the Rother north of Iping Common, where a second mansio was built in the 3rd century AD.
From these major throughfares, branch roads ran along the valley, lined by villas and settlements that demonstrate the agricultural intensification that characterises this period. Outstanding among the villas is Bignor, which was discovered in 1811 and opened to the public in 1814 – one of the earliest heritage attractions to do so. The site began as a modest ditched enclosure in the 1st century AD, followed by a timber-framed house, which was replaced in stone in the 2nd century, and then transformed into a palatial house with 65 rooms around a courtyard in the early 4th century. It has mosaics of outstanding quality and derived its wealth from an arable estate estimated at some 500 acres (202ha).
Decline in the later 4th century saw the abandonment of the Bignor villa, but elsewhere in the Rother Valley there seems to have been a degree of continuity of farming activity, despite the collapse of the Roman economic system. South of the Rother Valley, the settlement at Church Down, Chalton, excavated in the 1970s, revealed 61 buildings grouped in fenced enclosures and interpreted as individual farming units dating to the 6th to 7th centuries. These Chalton halls have been used as the basis for the two early medieval buildings that have been reconstructed at Butser Ancient Farm.
It is thought that the community at Chalton dispersed into surrounding downland valleys during the middle Saxon period, and in doing so they founded the settlements that underlie today’s towns and villages. Some of the Rother manors along the spring line and on the north bank of the river have -ingas place names (meaning ‘the people or followers of’, plus a personal name), which might indicate a 6th- or 7th-century date, and they are located on fertile soils previously exploited by Romano-British farmers. The first record of the river occurs in a charter of 956, when it is called the Scír, Old English for bright or clear; the name Rother comes later and is derived from the Old English word hryther, meaning cattle (hence Rotherbridge and Rotherfield).
Several different settlement types have been identified in the catchment area using historical sources, including charters, Domesday Book, monastic records, and maps of many different dates, recognising the long persistence of parish boundaries and manorial holdings. Parishes at the foot of the South Downs are long and narrow and at right angles to the topography, ensuring each community had access to a range of soil and environment types. Nucleated villages are dominant in the south, larger parishes to the north; further north still, extending to the Surrey border, there are dispersed settlements, characterised by the place-name element -fald (e.g. Lickfold), meaning an animal enclosure.
Some of the southern villages have daughter settlements, their relationship indicated by the similarity of their names, such as Didling and Didlefold, Linch and Linchmere, and Poling and Palingas Schittas (a place name found in a charter of 953 meaning ‘the swine-cotes of the people of Poling’). These settlements were linked by droveways along which pigs, sheep, and cattle were driven to seasonal pastures up to 30km (19 miles) away.
Each community had its own route, perhaps to ensure that there was adequate grazing for the journey.
Some of these ancient droveways remain as distinctive landscape features – as sunken lanes or hollow ways. Martin Bell observes that a perplexing feature of these droves is that they run parallel to each other and are closely spaced, at intervals averaging 700m (765 yards). He concludes that each community had its own route, perhaps to ensure that there was adequate grazing for the journey.
Domesday Book tells us that people were having a significant impact on the landscape by this period, with extensive cultivation as well as numerous mills, quarries, and churches (many of which have Saxo-Norman features), and monasteries. By this time there were ten bridges across the river at points where north–south and east–west routes intersect.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century saw a major transfer of land into secular ownership, and the growth of large, landed estates with impressive houses set in parks, such as Cowdray, Petworth, and Uppark. The intensive cultivation of these and other smaller estates, aided by lime marling of the marginal soils, using chalk quarried at Buriton and Amberley, began the significant soil erosion that remains an issue today.
Iron working began as early as 1574 at the well-preserved Fernhurst Furnace site, where a pond, wheel pits, blast furnace, and gun-casting pit have been recorded. There were 14 water-powered iron working sites within or close to the Rother catchment in the 16th to 18th centuries. Glass making is recorded at the edge of Petworth Park from c.1560, and later at 21 other sites. Pottery production is recorded at Graffham from 1670, the products being distributed as far as Bramber and Winchester. Other local industries included cloth production at Petworth and leather and cloth at Petersfield.
A sophisticated system of managed water meadows impacted on the floodplain landscape, providing early grass for sheep to graze and hay later in the year. The river’s lower section was improved for navigation by the construction of the Rother Navigation – part river and part canal – from Pulborough to Midhurst in 1791. This created seven locks along the 18km (11 miles) navigation, which closed in 1888, shortly after railways connected Petersfield to Midhurst in 1864, Pulborough to Midhurst in 1866, and Chichester to Midhurst in 1881.
Studying sunken lanes
Martin Bell’s overview of the human impact on the landscape is followed by more detailed thematic studies, including a chapter on the valley’s little-studied sunken lanes. Gilbert White was acquainted with these and described them as being worn by the ‘traffick of ages, and the fretting of water… so that they look more like water courses than roads… in many places they are reduced 16 or 18 feet below the level of the fields’. John Boardman’s chapter on the subject says that sunken lanes are more often mentioned in walking and cycling guides than by landscape historians, an issue that he sets out to remedy.
Sunken lanes are not unique to the Rother Valley. They occur in almost every county in England and in many places in Europe, and they result from the erosion of soft rock by foot, hoof, and wheel, further deepened, as Gilbert White observed, by running water. Some clearly relate to hillforts and some contain sections of Roman road. In the Midhurst area, their north–south orientation and great depth (more than 5m; 16ft), along with their considerable length and gradient of 1 in 20 suggest that they are of great antiquity and probably originated as drove roads connecting valley pastures with grazing on the higher ground. They also connect with middle Saxon villages at crossing points on the Rother, so they are likely to be of 7th-century date or earlier.
Their antiquity and their geological and ecological interest mean they are of great significance for archaeologists and natural scientists alike – a clear example of where these different disciplines intersect – as well as having evidential, recreational, educational, touristic, and community value. Recognising this, some have been designated as Sites of Importance for Nature Conservation and Road Verges of Ecological Importance, with consequences for their management. The major threats are lack of management of the vegetation on the banks, leading to increased shade, and an increase in agricultural traffic, mountain biking, and off-road vehicles.
Because they connect agricultural fields to the freshwater systems that feed the Rother, water runoff is also a major problem, exacerbated by roadside drains and culverts and the removal of the hedges that form a barrier to water and soil movement. Several contributors to The Rother Valley consider severe soil erosion, sediment transportation, and watercourse pollution by agricultural chemicals, sewage, road drainage, and urban expansion to be the major challenges facing the Rother catchment today – challenges that visitors to this idyllic and tranquil landscape might well not perceive.
Fortifying the future of the Rother
The final chapter of the volume addresses the question of whether human activity, in modifying this landscape over millennia, will lead to its continuing degradation or whether these risks can be mitigated. ‘Only by understanding the historical use and impact on the River Rother can the community appreciate the challenges posed and start looking towards the restoration of natural forms, processes, and ecology,’ writes Jenny Collins, in another example of where the natural and historic environments cannot be regarded as separate entities.
One way to deal with the problem of unwanted river sediments, and the associated pollution, might be to remove the remains of historic structures, such as mills, weirs and locks, from the river bed. This would improve the flow, especially in the lower reaches of the valley, where the narrowing effect of locks and other barriers leads to sediment deposition within the river bed, rather than on the floodplain, which is preferable. However, this would be to create a conflict between natural and cultural heritage – and there are better ways to influence sediment deposition by creating bypass channels and bank modifications to restore the river’s ability to flow into the natural floodplain when seasonal rains raise the river level.
More promisingly, there have been experiments in restoring historic meanders to the river that were bypassed and then drained when the Rother Navigation was constructed. In 2004, the Shopham Loop Restoration project restored a 1km (0.6 mile) meander on the Leconfield estate, with lowered embankments and scrapes that allowed fine sediments to be deposited on the floodplain rather than in the riverbed, where they have an adverse impact on the river’s biodiversity. One result was an increase in the diversity of fish species using the river at this point. Since then, the Leconfield estate has created additional shallow streams (artificial riffles), as has the Barlavington estate.
Stakeholders are also beginning to explore mammal-based recovery options within the Rother catchment, such as mink eradication and the introduction of beavers and water voles. The Sussex Beaver Partnership, led by the Sussex Wildlife Trust, aims to establish a healthy breeding population of Eurasian Beavers in each river catchment, liaising closely with local communities and monitoring the effects that beavers have on the local environment.
Another option is to restore the water meadow system that effectively ceased to operate in the 1930s, though some continued in use for hay production into the 1970s. Tithe maps have proved to be useful resources in understanding their extent and identifying areas where they could be brought back. Archaeological fieldwork has identified the remnants of ditch networks, sluices, and stone markers, notably on the Barlavington estate in the lower Rother Valley.
These various options and small-scale projects demonstrate what could be achieved in improving the Rother catchment for everyone’s benefit. To end on an optimistic note, it is encouraging to note that local landowners – and especially the larger estates – seem to be fully supportive of efforts to restore and enhance the natural and cultural heritage of the Rother catchment and are playing a leading role in finding solutions to human impacts that have had unintended negative consequences.
Further reading:
John Boardman and Ian Foster (eds.) (2024), The Rother Valley: a short history of a lowland river catchment and prospects for future management (Windgather Press, ISBN 978-1914427275, £39.95).
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