Great War trenches? I dug 'em in 1938!

However, it emerged this week that the First World War-style dugouts were actually constructed by Territorial Army recruits on a training exercise in the spring of 1938.

The surprise revelation came when former Alfriston blacksmith Les Edwards, 82, contacted the Sussex Express on Monday to share his recollections of digging the supposedly-unique landmark trenches.

'I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that people thought they were from the Great War,' said Les, of Hythe Crescent, Seaford. 'It was us in the engineers division who made them when we were training for the last war up on Seaford Head.

'We dug them all out to begin with and lined them with expanding wire in a criss-cross pattern to keep the soil and chalk in place. Chestnut posts were inserted at the edges after we punched holes in the chalk with an iron bar.'

The trenches were made to a First World War design and were quickly declared useless when it became clear that the Second World War, which started in 1939, would be characterised by attacks from the sky.

Assistant county archaeologist Martin Brown said he was 'fascinated' by the discovery that these were not the trenches he had thought. 'They look so much like the 1914 examples in France,' he said. 'I just presumed they were the same.

'It makes a complete nonsense of everything I was telling my volunteer diggers on Sunday. But in archaeology, if it looks like "X" then you have to presume that it is "X".

'The Ashdown Forest is absolutely covered with First World War trenches which we can confirm from pictures of them taken at the time. But there have never been period pictures of the site at Seaford - this is obviously why!

'It's absolutely fascinating and I'm indebted to Mr Edwards for letting us know. This kind of discovery can never be made with Roman history because there's no one to ask!'

If the trenches had indeed dated back to 1914, they would be the only First World War trenches dug in chalk still in existence, apart from those on the Somme in France.

However, Mr Brown said that there are certified 1914 trenches in other parts of Seaford, probably built by troops based at a tented camp in what is now Lullington Close. Wet, cold and muddy, the soldiers complained bitterly about their living conditions and soon went on strike.

One soldier wrote: 'We were treated as a lot of numbers, but our CO seemed to think we were being "spoiled". He spoke of "mutiny" and threatened that we would all be shot. But we thought we could only die once, so we wouldn't give way.'

Officers solved the problem by sending the troops on a two-week holiday on full pay. When they returned, they found the dreaded tent camp had vanished and were all given rooms in local hotels and guest houses.