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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2012
The site is in the parish of Playden, near Rye, Sussex, about 300 yards south-east of Mockbeggar House, and covers the top of a detached knoll which projects from the watershed between the Tillingham valley and the levels of Romney Marsh. The knoll is about 150 ft. above sea-level. No fewer than five springs rise within a short distance of the site (fig. 1).
The subsoil belongs to one of the geological formations of the Wealden series, viz., the Hastings Beds, represented at Mockbeggar by the Wadhurst Clay which contains extensive patches of sand and, in particular, pockets of a very fine white sand. One of these pockets is quite close to the site. It is of special interest that while the soil of the spur is mostly sand there is one protruding patch of hard yellow clay, and it is precisely on this patch that the prehistoric people formed their settlement.
Under the Wadhurst Clay, which here is only a few feet in thickness, there is over a hundred feet or so of sandstone forming the Ashdown Sands, well exposed at Point Hill in the parish.
page 162 note 1 Unpublished; examined at the British Museum by Mr. C. F. C. Hawkes and the writer in 1932.
page 162 note 2 Antiq. Journ. viii, 461 ff., fig. 3 r and fig. 5.
page 162 note 3 Woodhenge, pl. xxv, fig. I.
