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Among the many mysteries which the Neolithic World has left, the Devil’s Dyke is one of the strangest. At the top of the downs above Brighton starts a great gorge, which takes a winding course, and debouches upon the plain known as the Sussex Weald, about a mile away. Although it is obviously artificial, the first impression that it gives is that it is too vast to be the work of human hands. To this bewilderment another succeeds: what was the purpose of all this labour?
There can be no doubt that Neolithic Man took a natural valley, and shaped it to serve a purpose which we hope to demonstrate.
He shaped it by shearing off all irregularities and roundness from the surface of the downs on both sides of the valley until they presented the unnatural smoothness, steepness and regularity which we see to-day. There is nowhere any evidence of the chalk which was dislodged having been removed: somehow or another it was disposed of within the limits of the Dyke itself.
For what purpose was this done? The idea that the work was strategical in character appears to us {84} not less preposterous than the suggestion that the whole was excavated from the solid chalk.
We shall only understand its significance by considering its environment for miles around. At the upper end of the Dyke are the remains, only occasionally well-marked, of a very extensive camp, standing on the edge of the downs which on that side descend sharply to the Weald. The numerous cattle-tracks leading down to the Weald suggest that this camp was a great cattle-compound in spite of the comparative absence of wolf-platforms. Our interpretation of these works is that the cattle, when set free from the compound, found their own way down the slopes by their cattle-tracks to their grazing-grounds in the Weald, the Dyke itself being the only ascending way.
Passing now to the lower end of the Dyke, we find that the natural outline of the downs where they reach the plain would assist the herdsmen in rounding up their cattle and driving them to the entrance. This view is further supported by observing the cattle-tracks which converge on it.
This consideration of the surroundings of the Dyke shows that it served the purpose of a gigantic ascending cattle-way. In the morning the cattle would descend in single file from the compound above by the many small ways already referred to. In the evening, scattered in the plain, it would be difficult to distribute them evenly among these ways for their return, but easy to round them up, driving them all {85} into the angle of the hills and so up the great Dyke Road. The constant trampling of herds would in time form a miry V-shaped depression at the bottom of the valley along which they could only pass with difficulty. This difficulty the earth-workers overcame by cutting off the excrescences from the sides of the downs, and shovelling the material thus obtained into the bottom of the V-shaped depression. Thus they constructed a broad flat road which, owing to the steep gradient, would have been well drained, and, incidentally, made the great Dyke.
In such a vast ascending cattle-way one naturally expects to find a correspondingly important cattle tally-house.
To start from the top of the downs on a journey to recover missing cattle in the plain below would obviously be inconvenient, and the tally-house must be sought at the lower end of the Dyke.
Lying in this position, at a point perhaps three-quarters of a mile from the entrance to the compound, is a low embankment, and this, we think, was a tally-house. The embankment lies in the middle of the road, forming three sides of an oblong, about thirty paces by thirteen. It is not so constructed as to entirely block the way, but just sufficient space is left on either side to allow the beasts to pass by in single or double file. Thus two streams of cattle could be counted simultaneously.
On the level ground at the top, hidden amongst {86} the gorse bushes and outside the fortified compound, is an ancient dew-pond. Thus the cattle could be watered just before entering the compound for the night.
We know of no other cattle-way so perfect as the Devil’s Dyke, and we see in it an impressive testimony to the vitally important position which the herds occupied in the economy of Neolithic Man.