THIS IS FINDON — www.findonvillage.com  created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE BLACK MARKET

Copyright Valerie Martin 2003

John Pull became the President of the Worthing Archaeology Society in 1952. The local Findon lads of the 1940s can recall how they came across John and his associates hard at work on the downs above St. John the Baptist Church.

John and his weary excavting team were coming to the end of their twenty-years of excavation on Church Hill.   No doubt, the agricultural workers for Langmeads (the tenant farmers of the land belonging to the Findon Manor estate), would be glad to see the back of them.  

From the air Church Hill appeared to be massively punctured and battered, the result of hundreds of years of digging.   Before the surveys were completed, the ardent excavators had to tackle the largest depression on the hillside which appeared to indicate a pit head.  The twentieth century diggers found that this largest depression contained not one shaft, but two and they were promptly named Mine Shaft 6 and 7.   Somehow the Stone Age men had known the flints were there  and they had to procure them.
 

Sinking their vertical shafts into the hard ground was not easy.  Mine Shaft 6 had been dug first.   Mine Shaft 7 had been sunk next to it later.   The latter was so close to the first that the dividing chalk wall was only a foot thick at the surface.   When clearing ancient flint mines the excavators  often get the feeling that certain pits have been suddenly abandoned for no reason  and never worked again.  This was the case with Mine Shaft 6.  A   variety of antler mining tools (by no means worn out) and several very good flint knives were discovered. No reason for abandonment was apparent — perhaps disease overcame the miners?

In comparison, Mine Shaft 7 was much larger than 6.   In this shaft an intriguing  discovery came to light while clearing the chalk rubble with which the shaft had been filled. 

Two slanting holes were located.  They were  6-9 inches in diameter and fifteen inches apart and parallel with each other. Careful measurement revealed that their lower ends terminated on the middle of the mine shaft floor and the upper ends on the lip of the mine shaft.  They clearly indicated the presence of two stout wooden poles.  This may have been (1) the sides of a ladder or (2) or a slide (up which bags of spoil or flints might he manoevred).

This was the first direct evidence indicating the ancient miners were more organised than original thought and they had a rudimentary ladder descending the shaft — or a team effort means of raising materials to the surface.

More shoulder blade shovels and antler picks were found in the filling of pit 7, and also a flint pick, a flint axe and two flint knappers' mallets fashioned from antlers.

Mine Shafts 6 and 7 had been sunk through the site of a large industrial flint knapping workshop where the mined flints had been worked by the individuals producing the finished implements.   There were a number of axes and knives, a very fine toothed saw, and a most beautiful flaked scraper.

I will leave you with this little mystery.  Were these ancient tools just absent mindingly lost?  It seems unlikely that such good specimens would have been abandoned amongst the debris.   Were they perhaps deliberately secreted from fellow works in an attempt at later smuggling them to a prehistoric black market in the area?  Maybe I am doing the ancient craftsmen an injustice and the workshops were suddenly attacked by outside forces (either human or animal) and they downed tools to escape and never returned?   What do you think?

I have since learned that John Pull kept one of his finds, a skeleton, under a bed at his St. Elmo Road in nearby Worthing..... but I'm not sure which excavation this find came from.    It is also reported that he carried his finds back home in tobacco tins..... a somewhat unorthodox form of transport..... but very practical I am sure.

Continue if you would like to read about Blackpatch and its Secrets.

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.