The Stone Age in Beechamwell

Abstract

The greater part of the northern side of the parish of Beechamwell consists of marl and chalk with a top-soil of from one to eighteen feet of gravelly sand. The average depth of this is about eight feet. On the top of it there is a layer of turf or of cultivable soil from three-quarters of a foot to a foot and a-half in depth. There is a narrow strip of boulder clay deposit on which ice-scratched, worked flints are found. There is also a tongue of gravel one and a-half-mile long and half-a-mile wide at its widest part. On this, generally, very few worked flints have been found; fragments of pottery in some numbers have been found all over it however. On the edge of this strip, adjacent on the west to the boulder clay, several worked flints have been picked up, and a hoard of about 200 splinters and flakes was found lying between the sand and the turf, a foot deep here.

The greater part of the worked flints are found in an area of about half-a-mile square. The axes, whole or in fragments, are found scattered over the whole of the northern half of the parish. The first axe, however, I found was lying beside a path through the old fen that lies on the south side of Beechamwell. The worked flints found near the moraine are of a peculiar grey colour, and nearly all scimitar-shaped.

Flints are found in beds in the chalk and are still plentiful on the surface of the soil, although many have been picked off it for building and road-mending. The small area on which the worked flints are so numerous is the highest ground in Beechamwell.