Throughout history, seaways have thrived as the great conveyors of people, goods and culture. The channel separating the British archipelago from Continental Europe is of relatively recent date, one of the three surrounding seas that historically brought three cultural worlds – Celtic, Germanic and Scandinavian – into contact and collision.

Well before Roman times, the “British” Isles were known as the “tin islands” because of the export of that metal, extracted largely in Cornwall and West Devon. Together with copper, lead and gold, also found in Highland Britain and Ireland, these minerals formed the basis of the earliest cross-Channel trade. By the late iron-age (150 BC – 42 AD), the close kinship between Celtic peoples on either side of this narrow sea would bring increased migration into Southern England. With the last major Celtic incursion of the Belgae, prehistory merges with history.