Editing Lewes (section)

===Pre-Saxon===
The immense strategic value of the site, which is able to command traffic between the [[English Channel|Channel]] coast and the Sussex interior, was recognised as early as the [[Iron Age]], when a hill-fort was built on [[Mount Caburn]], the steep-sided hill that overlooks the Ouse (and the modern town of Lewes) from the east.

During the [[Roman Empire|Roman]] period, there was an aristocratic [[Roman villa|villa]] at [[Beddingham]],<ref>Russell, M., 2006: ''Roman Sussex''. Tempus. pp. 166–169.</ref> at the foot of Mount Caburn, and there have been several finds of Roman coins and pottery sherds in Lewes itself. The Victorian historian [[Thomas Walker Horsfield]] therefore reckoned that there must have been a Roman settlement on the site, and he identified it with the otherwise unlocatable town of ''Mutuantonis''.<ref name=gazetteer>{{cite web |url=http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/descriptions/entry_page.jsp?text_id=739550&word=NULL |title=Descriptive Gazetteer entry for Lewes |access-date=21 September 2008 |last=Wilson |first=John Marius |date=1870{{ndash}}72 |work=Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales |publisher=Great Britain Historical GIS Project |archive-date=24 October 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121024163603/http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/descriptions/entry_page.jsp?text_id=739550&word=NULL |url-status=live }}</ref> Another antiquarian, John Elliot, even suggested that central Lewes's distinctive network of [[Alley#Southern England|twittens]] was based on the layout of a [[castra|Roman legionary fortress]]; however modern historians are rather more cautious about the possibility of a Roman Lewes, as there is as yet no archaeological evidence for a built-up area dating back to the Roman period.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brent |first=Colin |date=2004 |title=Pre-Georgian Lewes: The Emergence of a County Town |pages=3–4}}</ref>