Pevensey, battle of

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Pevensey, battle of, 491. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in remarkable and suspicious detail, records a Saxon attack in 491 led by Ælle and his son Cissa on Britons entrenched in the old Roman fort of Anderida or Andredes-cester, near Pevensey. The place was stormed and ‘there was not even one Briton left there’. It sounds a very plausible episode in the establishment of the kingdom of Sussex. Cissa gave his name to the chief town of the region, Chichester.

J. A. Cannon

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