PROBABLE FLINT MINES NEAR TOLMERE POND, FINDON

by Eliot Curwen, M.A., M.B., B.Ch., F.S.A. and
E. Cecil Curwen, M.A., M.B., B.Ch

On the south side of the main road opposite Tolmere (Tolmare or Tormare?) Pond, three-quarters of a mile west of the Gun Inn at Findon, a series of scoops and depressions are to be noticed on the west face of Church Hill.  These scoops extend in a line roughly parallel with the contour all along the west face of the hill for a distance of a few hundred yards, just above the old cart-track (probably an old droveway) which leads down from the pond southwards into Clapham Wood.

These depressions must be a familiar sight to many who have passed that way, as indeed they were to the writers, but it did not occur to them until recently that they might possibly prove to mark a flint mining area.   The first impression given is that of a series of scoops from which material has been obtained for making up a road, but a closer examination reveals that many of the depressions are true pits and not scoops at all, and closely resemble the well-known flint mines on Cissbury, Blackpatch and Harrow Hill.   Their distribution along the contour line, and the scoop-like character of many of the excavations, suggests that if they were flint mines they were principally out-crop workings.   

One interesting feature is that they appear to interrupt the course of an ancient variant of the modern cart-track above referred to indicating that, if the workings are in reality flint-mines, this old hollow-way is older still, and that therefore the modern cart-track, which is a continuation of the ridgeway further north, represents a trail going back at any rate to the Stone Age.   This old track may be traced southwestwards towards Clapham Woods in the form of a "double lynchet" terrace-way running between lynchet-fields of Celtic type.    An earthwork, consisting of a bank with ditch on the lower (north) side crosses the northern slope of Church Hill from east to wet, and stops just short of the pits shown in this plan.   A lynchet of Celtic type also skirts them on the east side.   The pits are clearly older than the earthwork and lynchet and, indeed, two of them underlie the ditch of the former.

In order to get more definite light on this question we approached Colonel Margesson, the owner of the property, with a view to obtaining permission to do a little trial digging.   This permission being kindly and readily given by him, and also by the tenant, Mr. Wills, we dug a trial trench through one of the smaller pits near the upper margin of the area (Pit 20).   The mould in the centre of the depression proved to be 18 in thickness, while under it was the basin-shaped surface of the chalk filling of the pit.   Spread out in an even layer over this chalk-filling, and in the last inch of the mould, were fragments of an early Romano-British vessel, nearly all of which it was possible to piece together, thus indicating that the chalk filling of the pit was complete before the Roman period. 

Digging a short distance into this chalk filling the only object of interest encountered was a rough flint chopper or wedge of characteristic flint mine type.   As circumstances did not allow of further work the trench was filled in again.   We also made a rough survey of those pits which were situated nearest to the pond.