Northwest Europe, 05 Britain (Britannia), 05C ENGLAND, Associated Islands: Isle of Wight

An English county and the largest island of England, the Isle of Wight, known to the Romans as Vectis, is an island in the English Channel. The whole of the county is divided into civil parishes.

CIVIL PARISHES: TOWNS* AND VILLAGES†
01	Gurnard†	09	Cowes*	16	East Cowes*	25	Fishbourne†
02	Calbourne† +Newtown† +Porchfield†	10	Northwood†	17	Whippingham†	26	Ryde*
		11	Newport* Carisbrooke†	18	Wootton Bridge†	27	Nettlestone† +Seaview†
				19	Havenstreet† +Ashey†
03	Shalfleet†	12	Chillerton† +Gatcombe†			28	Brading*
04	Yarmouth*			20	Arreton†	29	St Helens*
05	Freshwater†	13	Rookley†	21	Newchurch†	30	Bembridge†
06	Totland†	14	Chale†	22	Godshill†	31	Sandown*
07	Brighstone†	15	Niton† +Whitwell†	23	Wroxall†	32	Lake†
08	Shorwell†			24	Ventnor*	33	Shanklin*

During the Last Glacial Period (115-11.7 kya) sea levels were lower because more of Earth’s water was locked in the ice. 

A ridge of chalk linked Wight to Dorset and from the Early Pleistocene (2.6-1.8 mya) the Solent was part of the extinct River Solent draining the Hampshire Basin. About 400 kya (MIS 11) the rising water created the Dover Strait and the River Solent joined the Thames, Rhine, Scheldt, Somme, Meuse and Seine as tributaries of the prehistoric Channel River carrying their waters southwestwards into the Atlantic. When the ice began to retreat (11.7 kya), the chalk ridge was breached and Wight became an island (11,000-10,000 BC).

On the island the earliest evidence of humans is at Priory Bay, St Helens, and Bleak Down, Rookley, where flint axes left by Lower Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers were dated by association with surrounding deposits to the Lower Palaeolithic. The earliest evidence of the Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian (Neanderthalic) industry is a flint assemblage, consisting of fifty handaxes and debitage, recovered from Great Pan Farm, Newport. Significant evidence of the Upper Palaeolithic on the island is yet to be discovered.

The Mesolithic Period (9700-4000 BC) is associated with the disappearance of the larger animals and the adoption of a broader hunter-gatherer way of life. Bouldnor Cliff, an underwater Mesolithic site in the Western Solent, consists of lithics and a hearth lying on organic peat, itself lying above the remains of submerged forest dated 8565 to 8345 BC.

Farming began during the Neolithic (4000-2300 BC), and on the island the surviving monuments date from this period. Near to the village of Brighston is the Longstone, a block of sandstone thirteen feet high, with a smaller one fallen beside it. The other two surviving monuments are a long barrow at Afton Down in Freshwater, and a mortuary enclosure at Tennyson Down in Totland, located either side of Freshwater Bay. A late Neolithic trackway was built across the saltmarsh at Wootton Creek (Wootton Bridge and Fishbourne).

In the Bronze Age (2300-700 BC) metal was used for the first time (tools and weapons), the continuing expansion of farming initiated the large-scale clearance of forests, and the people built round barrows (semispherical-shaped mounds of earth and/or stone) centred over the graves of their dead. 

There are several types of round barrows: bowl-barrows, the simplest, resemble inverted bowls; bell barrows surrounded by a ditch and an outer bank, separated from the mound by a berm (flat annulus of land) to give the impression that the mound is set on a platform; and disc barrows which have a small central mound located on a wide platform surrounded by a ditch and an outer bank.

The island has over two-hundred and forty reported sites of bronze age  round barrows, and nearly all of them are on the chalk down that runs through the centre of the island. The Brook Down Group (Brighstone) has six bowl barrows, one bell barrow and one disc barrow. The Ashey Down Group (Havenstreet and Ashey) has ten visible barrows. The round barrow on Headon Warren (Tolland) is one of only a few to survive from the early Bronze Age (1700-1500 BC). It is also unusual in not being sited on chalk. 

The urnfield at Barnes High (Brighstone) contained between ten and fifteen urns in a circle three to four metres in diameter. A Bronze Age hoard, comprising seven bronze spearheads, four axes, one dagger and one halberd was found on Arreton Down, Arreton. Only two Bronze Age hut sites are recorded, located on the west side of Gore Down, Chale.

Julius Caesar reported that the Belgae took the Isle of Wight in about 85 BC, and describes the culture of this general region as ‘Belgic’.

Although hillforts were prominent in nearby mainland counties in the Pre-Roman Iron Age (700-00-43), the only definite Iron Age hillfort on the island is the promontory hillfort at Chillerton Down (Chillerton and Gatcombe). Huts from the end of the Pre-Roman Iron Age have been recorded from Sudmoor (Freshwater) and from Gills Cliff (Ventnor).

During the Roman Period (43-410), Suetonius (c.53; c.69-122+) says that the future Roman emperor, Vespasian ‘fought thirty battles, subjugated two warlike tribes (the Durotriges and Dumnonii) captures more than twenty oppida (Celtic fortified urban centres) and took the Isle of Wight’. This is the first written reference to the island, which is here called by its Roman name of ‘Vectis’.

The Romans built no towns on the island, but it became an agricultural centre and at least five villas are known.  Brading, Carisbrook, Combley (Havenstreet and Ashey), Newport and Rock (Brighstone) are associated with the central ridge. A sixth, Gurnard Villa on the northwest coast, was destroyed by coastal erosion in the nineteenth century. 

Brading Villa was probably the largest on the island and a field system can be seen near Brading Down. The Romans moved some of their troops from Britain in 398 and the withdrawal was complete in 410.