Aerial Investigation and Mapping Report - English Heritage

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this earthwork may have suggested its name, ‘The Bible’ is a later re-naming andpresumably a reaction to its original title ‘The Devil’s Book’.In 1835 Thomas Horsfield not only claimed that this earthwork was notable as the ‘largestand deepest’ example of the ‘numerous trenches of a square and right-angled form’ foundacross this part of the South Downs (Horsfield 1835 vol I, 344), but also that it was ‘wellknown’ as the Devil’s Book - before adding that the ‘place is certainly one of solitude andseclusion. Meet for earnest meditation and grave designs’ (Horsfield 1835, vol I, 344).The Devil’s Book is typical of the type of names given to archaeological monuments whichinvoke the supernatural and Sussex (East & West) includes a Devil’s Ditch, Devil’s Dykes,Devil’s Humps and Devils Jumps (Grinsell 1976, 125). Examples of these were collectedtogether by the archaeologist Leslie Grinsell as part of his study of the folklore, myths andlegends of prehistoric monuments (Grinsell 1976). These include references to KingArthur, fairies, giants, Grim, Woden and the Devil. Grinsell carried out his survey of placenames in the 1930s with the idea (then widely held) that this information could providesome understanding of the original beliefs associated with the archaeological sites, thoughthis concept was eventually rejected (Hutton 2009, 19). Jeremy Harte’s paper on thefolklore of prehistoric sites (Harte 2009) offers a further example of the disconnectionbetween prehistoric monuments and their folklore in highlighting a number of instanceswhere a monument’s name has been changed in the post medieval period. Finally, as theexample of The Devil’s Book shows, not all supernatural names were given tomonuments from the prehistoric period.The use of the name Devil appears to be a post medieval phenomenon. The Devil’s Dykein Cambridgeshire was first recorded with that name in 1574 (Harte 2009, 26) while theGrim’s Ditch between Wiltshire and Berkshire, known as such from the middle ages to atleast the 17th century was by the 19th century known to locals as The Devil’s Ditch (ibid,25). Features are not only renamed, but, during this period, the Devil’s name wasinvariably given to ‘outstanding landmarks of the countryside’ (ibid 27); Devil names, it isargued, were given ‘not in an age of faith and superstition, but in the last two or threecenturies – a time when devils were found mostly in pantomimes and picture books’ (ibid26).The Devil has not always been seen as such an unthreatening figure, particularly in theearlier part of the period in question. The medieval concept of a personal Devil whocould cause storms or snatch sinners away was strengthened by the Reformation(Thomas 1971, 560). It was also from the late 16th century that the belief was establishedin Britain that witches owed their power to a pact with the Devil which made witchcraft aform of devil worship (Thomas 1971, 521, 523). This was also a period when witchcraftwas made a statutory offence with acts passed in 1542, 1563 and 1604 (finally repealed1736) (Thomas 1971, 525). Some of these offences carried the death penalty and it hasbeen estimated that around 1000 people may have been executed under witchcraftstatutes (ibid 535).© ENGLISH HERITAGE 31 22 - 2013
The 1835 reference to the earthwork being called The Devil’s Book is, so far, the earliestfound. It cannot be said with any certainty whether the name was coined in the contextof a belief in the Devil as the personification of evil or during a period when, as Harte putsit, we are not meant to take the Devil name seriously (Harte 2009, 26). The name ‘Devil’may have simply been added to this book-shaped feature in the landscape but it is worthnoting that the term ‘Devil’s Book’ does exist. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) mentions‘devil’s book’ in Henry VI part 2; ‘By this hand, thou thinkest me as far in the devil’s bookas thou and Falstaff for obduracy and persistency’. The 1690s witch trials in Salem,America included numerous references to those entering into a pact with the Devil havingsigned the devil’s book (Reis 1997); this makes Allcroft’s description of this Sussexearthwork being in the shape of a ‘ledger’ all the more intriguing (Allcroft 1924, 24). Thedevil’s book also appears to be a catch all term for a variety of things. Used in an 18thcentury novel it was the ephemera associated with fortune telling (Anon 1756, 126) whilein an 18th century sermon it seems to refer to any written work that wasn’t the Bible(Anon (ed) 1821, 248). The Protestant Magazine records a number of instances thatdemonstrate that to some Catholics, the protestant Authorised Version of the Bible wasconsidered ‘the Devil’s Book’ and cases where copies of the Bible were burnt wererecorded both in Ireland in 1852 and 1855 and in Birmingham in 1848 (Anon 1855, 358-361).While these 19th century examples probably have little bearing on the naming of theenclosure after the Devil, they do provide the context for the change of the enclosure’sname. Despite, being well known as ‘The Devil’s Book’ in 1835 by 1873 the OrdnanceSurvey map calls this enclosure ‘The Bible’. The accounts of the Bible burning indicatesome of the tensions between Protestants and Catholics at this time, a situationparticularly pertinent to Lewes. This town has a strong tradition of Protestant dissent andduring the 19th century saw a period of anti-catholic agitation and anti-High ChurchAnglicanism (Goring 2003, 126). It is perhaps in this period of religious tension that thename of the enclosure was changed.© ENGLISH HERITAGE 32 22 - 2013
Page 1 and 2: RESEARCH REPORT SERIES no. 22-2013S
Page 3 and 4: Cover Photograph: Cuckmere Haven, t
Page 5: ARCHIVE LOCATIONEnglish Heritage,Th
Page 8 and 9: Figure 1 Revised project area......
Page 10 and 11: INTRODUCTIONThis report describes t
Page 12 and 13: Weald cut through the Downs forming
Page 14 and 15: Monument records in the NRHE AMIE d
Page 16 and 17: ‘Although there are up to 20…,
Page 18 and 19: Figure 5 Toms’ 1920 survey (left)
Page 20 and 21: Subsequent survey by the Ordnance S
Page 22 and 23: The evidence from aerial photograph
Page 24: on aerial photographs as differenti
Page 27 and 28: Although just outside the project a
Page 29 and 30: Figure 12 General view of the easte
Page 31 and 32: large sub-rectangular field that is
Page 33 and 34: cultivators of these lynchets’ (i
Page 35 and 36: Forest and Lullington Heath - 37 ly
Page 37 and 38: SHEEP AND THE DEVIL’S BOOKFrom th
Page 39: ‘Celtic’ fields immediately to
Page 43 and 44: Figure 20 Medieval and post medieva
Page 45 and 46: Figure 22 An early example of by-pa
Page 47 and 48: absence of a winch on earlier maps
Page 49 and 50: Figure 23 Extents of South Camp, ba
Page 51 and 52: 1988, 234). The grouping of 40 huts
Page 53 and 54: indicating probable re-use for mili
Page 55 and 56: 30th January 1943. The wind velocit
Page 57 and 58: the town appeared to be rendered in
Page 59 and 60: Movement upriver was hindered by pi
Page 61 and 62: ground surface. A Diver site was lo
Page 63 and 64: mouth with lines of pontoons and
Page 65 and 66: Figure 33 Trenches aligned approxim
Page 67 and 68: The aerial photographs taken by the
Page 69 and 70: However, for his painting Coastal D
Page 71 and 72: war aerial photographs show a group
Page 73 and 74: Figure 40 Camouflage netting over t
Page 75 and 76: Description of the current Long Man
Page 77 and 78: which would certainly fit with sugg
Page 79 and 80: separate from it. The toes of the t
Page 81 and 82: other parts of the body, and indeed
Page 83 and 84: lip of a large chalk quarry, was, a
Page 85 and 86: something for which the likes of Pe
Page 87: Hill and the Lavant Caves, both nea
Page 90 and 91:
to the present day…’ (Butler &
Page 92 and 93:
least was unsupported by evidence f
Page 94 and 95:
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
Page 96 and 97:
documentary sources or fieldwork. N
Page 98 and 99:
Barber M, Wickstead, H in press Dam
Page 100 and 101:
Drewett, P 1978 Neolithic Sussex, i
Page 102 and 103:
Lowry, B (eds) 2001 20 th Century D
Page 104:
ENGLISH HERITAGE RESEARCH AND THE H
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