This marshside excavation, at the juncture of the South Downs and Willingdon Levels, revealed evidence that it was home to communities that exploited and interacted with these two different landscapes from the early prehistoric to the post-medieval period.

The earliest activity was a probable Bronze Age inhumation burial, interred on a conspicuous chalk promontory, with further cremation burials added in the Middle Bronze Age. The first sustained settlement was a substantial Early/Middle Iron Age enclosure, where large-scale saltworking was undertaken as a specialist activity. A subsequent Middle/Late Iron Age settlement, occupied with alteration until the Late Roman period, acquired a specialist crop-processing function, probably when a villa was located to the immediate north in the Early Roman period.

In the later 6th–7th centuries, sunken-featured buildings and a post-built hall were constructed. This is the long-anticipated, first identification of Early Anglo-Saxon settlement at Eastbourne, and represents the second largest settlement of the period identified in East Sussex. By the 8th century, this was abandoned, and the site was bisected by a new holloway, re-establishing the connection between the South Downs and the marsh of the Willingdon Levels.

A small ‘croft and toft’ type farmstead occupied the site in the high medieval period, before a substantial masonry farmhouse was built in the mid 15th century. In the 16th century, this was converted from an open hall to a fully floored building.

The considerable artefact assemblage recovered included over 29,000 sherds of Iron Age pottery, one of the largest fired clay assemblages associated with prehistoric saltworking in southern England, and sufficient post-Roman pottery to establish a fabric type-series for the wider local area.

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