We welcome your report (The Argus, February 28) of the discovery of a further length of the network of minor Roman roads known to have been used to carry iron away from the group of production sites centred on Beauport (not Beaumont as stated).

To put this in context, the existence of the iron working site at Pestalozzi Village (formerly Oaklands Park) has been known since 1849 and, in 1879, the local antiquary James Rock described how the slag heaps (not slag pits) had been quarried away for road making.

Many papers have been published on the Roman road alignments and our late member Dr Gerald Brodribb, who discovered the officers’ bath house and other features at Beauport Park, and his colleague Henry Cleere (former president of the Council for British Archaeology) postulated that the finished product may have been carried along to the “Classis Britannica” base at Lympne in Kent via the River Brede from Sedlescombe before a harbour on the Rother near Bodiam Station superseded it.

Our group have carried out similar surveys of lengths of this highway leading northward from Sedlescombe through Bodiam to join the major roads from the Kent ports towards London.

This led to the recent discovery of a large Iron Age enclosure adjacent to a military Roman industrial complex north of Sedlescombe, first published in the 2013 edition of our journal.

Kevin and Lynn Cornwell, joint field officers, Hastings Area Archaeological Research Group