Building Anderita Late Roman Coastal Defences and the Construction of the Saxon Shore Fort at Pevensey

The construction of the Roman coastal installation at Pevensey (East Sussex) in the late third century represented a building project of considerable importance, size and complexity. A study of the surviving material has identified the lithologies employed in the fort's construction, the approximate quantities in which they were present and the likely areas from which they were quarried. Local sources were exploited wherever possible, although an insufficient supply of brick seems to have forced the builders to look further afield for a substitute material for use in the bonding courses. The location of the quarries suggests that the majority of raw materials were moved by boat, and that the transport fleet required was remarkably small. Estimates of the length of construction for the later series of Shore Forts range from less than three years to over four decades. The labour and transport requirements have been calculated for Pevensey, allowing a discussion of the feasibility of each of these proposed time scales. It is argued that all were achievable, although in the briefer scenarios the army would have been unable to provide sufficient manpower, necessitating a draft of civilian labourers.