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

How the village may have looked.

                         Click on image to enlarge

THE NEOLITHIC VILLAGE ABOVE FINDON AT HIGH SALVINGTON

Copyright Valerie Martin 2008

How many of the dwellers of modern Findon realise that on the wild downlands which lie above their homes, there was once a highly organised industry supplying the country with axes and other cutting tools?   I am not talking about just a few centuries back..... but in the biblical days of Abraham living his nomad's life in Canaan.    The later days of our Stone Age, before any metals were dreamed of, and the necessary commodity for the axe heads was obtained from mining the chalk hillsides for flints.  

At one time, not quite so long ago there was a certain Mr. Jackson who lived at High Salvington on the hillside above Findon.    One day while out walking on the hills near his home it is said that he noticed a worked flint on the ground and he stopped and picked it up.    Fascinated by his find, he slipped it into his pocket and took it home.   This developed into his hobby of collecting flint implements from a ploughed field to the south of the flint mines at Church Hill.    His finds grew and grew like Topsy and eventually they were officially classified as Neolithic flint implements by experts of the day.   Mr Jackson finally presented some of his collection to the Worthing Museum.    

He had the very interesting theory that the cultivated land where his discoveries was the location of a Neolithic village.  No one bothered to take him up on his idea, nor conducted any detailed survey and the theory died with Mr. Jackson.

In later years, Barclay Wills, the author of many downland books on our area, began hunting for flint implements in the very same ploughed field between Church Hill and High Salvington and he came to exactly the same conclusion as Mr. Jackson.

I have found that the next expert to arrive on the scene was John Pull the amateur archaeologist in 1935.   He satisfied himself that both Barclay Wills and Mr Jackson had been correct and, indeed, a prehistoric settlement had been situated on the hill above Findon. 

At that time, he was able to trace a considerable number of shallow, saucer-shaped depressions in the field.   These were less than a foot deep and greatly varied in diameter from 10 ft. to 30 ft.    He declared that these depressions marked the foundations of the ancient Neolithic homesteads and the difference in size may have been due to the importance of the occupants or merely the number of people in each family.  

Simply for identification purposes from now on I will refer this site as the High Salvington Neolithic Village.    

I give my congratulations to the Neolithic architect whoever he was.  The selection of the site was indeed a most admirable one.   It was well elevated above the swampy coastal plain spread out like a tablecloth below, with well-drained pasture for any cattle.    There was good soil for primitive cultivation.... and timber was easily accessible from the wooded countryside to the west.   Needless to say this wooded area would give a plentiful supply of game to the inhabitants.

click on map to enlarge

A sketch of how the High Salvington Village looked in 1935 when John Pull visited the ploughed field.

The prehistoric village stretched in a diagonal street consisting of a long line of irregularly placed, but not widely scattered huts.   The street headed northwards and in John Pull’s time it was towards a group of lanky and rather spindly beeches, known as Rogers Clump. 

What form these dwellings took is difficult for me to now surmise.  Certainly their circular-dished shaped remains indicate that they were conical or of beehive shaped design.    It can now only be guessed that ancient people would have constructed their homes of perhaps wattle and thatch using lightweight timbers and maybe stretched hide?

About halfway along the prehistoric street, John Pull found evidence of a large communal fire for the whole village and this would have been kept continuously "on the go" for years and years.   The siting of the central fire was remarkably clearly indicated to his keen eye as a huge round greyish patch on the ground.   He stepped it out and reported it as 100 paces across.  To the observant, the flints in that area were scorched to almost a powder.  

At the southern end of the village John Pull noted a significant depression some 100 ft. across and 6 ft. deep and no doubt scratched his head ....what could it represent?    He came to the conclusion it could have been a pond.    He checked and saw that the one time puddled bottom had been ploughed out over the years.

There was no shortage of flint implements and abandoned chippings on the village site for him to find.... even though Mr Jackson, who had started all of this ― and Barclay Wills had been there before him.   Flints abounded throughout the High Salvington Neolithic Village and were most frequently discovered around the edges of the larger hut circles.   The conclusion was that the High Salvington Neolithic Village had been an industrial area undoubtedly for implement manufacture.    The sound of the flint-knappers at work would certainly have echoed around the hillside. 

I think the climate may have been wetter in those days and I can fancifully imagine our forbears sitting at the openings of their huts and looking across the valley to a similar glow in the sky.    On dry days they may have sat on the windswept hillside around the charcoal remnants of their fire  .......and glanced up again to see the flickering from the Mount Carvey embers while the villagers also prepare for slumber. 

It seems that life at the High Salvington NeolithicVillage was remarkably similar to that of the settlement just across the valley at Mount Carvey.      See: The Neolithic Village at Cissbury

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