The Wealden Iron Industry — 4th Century — Deliberate Contraction

After the reconquest of 296 AD production contracts deliberately to two garrison-controlled coastal corridors — not economic decline but deliberate imperial policy removing the resource base that had made Carausius possible.

The iron sites shown on this map represent the final phase of Wealden production under Roman administration, broadly 300 to 400 AD. The contrast with the preceding centuries is immediately apparent. From the dozens of active sites in the first and second centuries and the major industrial complexes of the third, production has contracted to just a handful of sites concentrated in two specific coastal corridors — the Ouse valley from Oldlands and Oaky Wood southward toward Barcombe Mills and the coast at Newhaven, and the Ashburnham and Boreham Street sites on the Combe Haven drainage feeding toward the Pevensey coast.

This contraction is not explained by exhausted deposits, economic collapse, or barbarian disruption. The ore was still there. The forest was still there. The workforce that had operated the industry for three centuries did not disappear. What changed in 296 AD was the political decision made by Constantius after his reconquest of Britain — a decision to dismantle the integrated military-industrial complex that had made Carausius's decade of independence possible, while retaining just enough production capacity for shipbuilding maintenance and garrison supply.

The two surviving production corridors drain to two different coastal sectors under two separate garrison commands — the Ouse toward Newhaven and the western coast, the Combe Haven toward Pevensey garrisoned by the Numerus Abulcorum, a continental limitanei unit with no connection to the Classis Britannica tradition. Neither garrison had the institutional relationships with the Wealden workforce that Carausius had inherited and exploited. No single commander controlled both corridors simultaneously. Coordination of sufficient iron and timber for serious fleet-building required imperial authorisation to direct both commands together — making a repeat of 286 AD structurally impossible without Rome's active cooperation.

The fourth century map is not a picture of decline. It is a picture of a deliberate policy decision, visible in the landscape two centuries after it was taken. For the full argument see the end of ironworking in the Weald and Carausius and Pevensey pages.