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The Flint-Knapping Industry at Brandon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Rainbird Clarke
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Extract

Despite the obvious analogies between the ancient and modern flint industries of Britain and the equally obvious gaps in the continuity of their evolution, neither archaeologists nor economic historians have stooped to elucidate the problems of what it has become a platitude to call ‘The World's Oldest Industry’. The flint-knapping industry still existing at Brandon for the production of gunflints has alone among the flint-knapping industries of Britain been described with any degree of adequacy. A bare record survives of the former existence of a score of similar industries but the majority is unrecognized and neglected. The student of the question today has as much cause to bemoan the paucity of data as did Beckmann, who wrote in 1814 ‘Many of my readers will perhaps be desirous to know in what manner our gunflints are prepared. Considering the great use made of them it will hardly be believed how much trouble I had to obtain information on the subject’. The magnitude of the dumps of waste products at Brandon at the close of the Napoleonic War provoked exclamations of wonder from contemporary topographers, but apparently the first to realize the interest and significance of the Brandon industry was Dr J. Mitchell, who in 1837 communicated his observations to the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal. In 1870 James Wyatt, F.G.S., contributed a chapter on the subject to Stevens’ Flint Chips, but the classic account from which all subsequent articles derive is that by S. B. J. Skertchly, of H.M. Geological Survey.

Type
Research-Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 9 , Issue 33 , March 1935 , pp. 38 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1935

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References

1 History of Inventions, 2nd edition, IV, 611. Writing on the subject in his ‘Cyclopaedia’ in 1819, Rees mentions French sites by name but preserves a politic secrecy with regard to Britain, mentioning no single site. (See article ‘Gun Flint, in Technological Mineralogy’, vol. XVII).

2 Excursions in the county of Suffolk, 1818, 1, 99.Google Scholar

3 XXII, 36–40.

4 ‘On the Manufacture of Gun Flints’, 1879. (District memoir of Geological Survey of England and Wales).

5 The first in the possession of Mr F. Edwards of Brandon to whom the writer is indebted for this information, and the others in the possession of Mrs Snare of Brandon. He also wishes to express his indebtedness to another knapper, Mr V. Edwards.

6 For microscopic photographs of flint sections, see Report of Smithsonian Institution, 1897, part I, plate 16.

7 Ceased, c. 1878–9. Woodward, H.B. Geology of England and Wales, 2nd ed., 420.Google Scholar

8 This site is probably identical with that at Trowse listed by Clarke, W.G. Norfolk and Suffolk, 1921, 120.Google Scholar

9 Johnson, W. Folk Memory, 1908, 231.Google Scholar

10 Extinct before 1837.

11 Wyatt, in Flint Chips, 1870, 588.Google Scholar

12 Antiq. Journ., 1925, 5, 423–6 (5 figs.)Google Scholar

13 Antiq. Journ., 1925, 5, 158–63.Google Scholar

14 Ceased over a century ago.

15 ‘Some supposed Gun Flint Sites’. P.P.S.E.A., 1918, 2, 360–5.Google Scholar

16 Reports (Harrison, J.P.) 1879, 400–1;Google Scholar 1880, 158–9, 626–7. See also Beddoe, J. Races of Britain, 1885, 254.Google Scholar

17 Johnson, W. Folk Memory, 1908, 190.Google Scholar

18 e.g. at High Down, Sussex. Evans, Ancient Stone Implements, 1897, 314.Google Scholar

19 Near the main Thetford-Brandon road.

20 Section in Geological Survey Memoir: Parts of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk (Ely, Mildenhall and Thetford), 1891, p.45.Google Scholar To save expense of cartage the last knapper, Ashley, quartered and flaked stone at the mine-head.

21 Shallow shafts only 13 feet deep near Blood Hill tumulus, and in the eastern arm of the former Half Moon plantation.

22 About one mile north of Shaker’s Lodge.

23 The classic example of a sandstorm for this district is described in the Geological Survey Memoir cited, p. 89, and in Phil. Trans. 1668, no. 37, 722–4 Google ScholarPubMed (Wright, T.) (abridged 1809, 2, 265–5).Google Scholar

* We are much obliged to Dr E. Cecil Curwen for the photographs which he permits us to reproduce.—EDITOR.

24 Nine feet is more usual.

25 Skertchly’s shaft was 37–38 feet in depth.

26 In this connexion we cannot forbear quoting the miner’s remark that he ‘never sank stunt, but under-ran his two by bubber-hutching on the sosh’.

27 Skertchly’s ground plan of a mine is idealized.

28 ‘Horns’ occur also occasionally below the Wallstone.

29 Not in the section shown in FIG. I, opposite.

30 Wyatt, in error, denies the existence of this royalty. In 1837 Mitchell records the miners’ complaint against the rent of 5s per jag.

31 Mitchell, 1837, terms the quarterer a ‘cracker’.

32 Mitchell, p. 38, alleges that the French mode was introduced into England by James Woodyer, of Kingsdown between London and Maidstone, who died c. 1780–90. Probably French methods reached Brandon some time after their use in Kent. Skertchly’s legend is that the flaking-hammer was introduced from France, probably during the war of the Spanish Succession by a prisoner called Péro. By 1927, the version had it that the name of the incarcerated knapper was Freuer who, at the conclusion of hostilities returned to Brandon, married, and founded the family of knappers, the Frewers. (Rogerson, Blackwood’s Magazine, April 1927, p.528).Google Scholar

33 Not 1848, as Rogerson, p.531.

34 In 1858 one wholesaler and 7 flint-makers controlled the industry. In 1868 three masters employed 36 employees.

35 Tinder-boxes contained a trimmed flint, a small bar of steel and a woven fuse neatly packed in metal box. Each box was as serviceable as its bulk in matches.

36 I after x = 100; — = ½ of any number preceding it; XII — = 1250 ; xx7— = 2750; IIII— = 450; = 5; = 1975; o = £; Ɵ = 10/-; I = 1d; — = ½d; X = 10; I = 1/-; jag = (W. Johnson) (W. G. Clarke); = ½ jag.

37 The varying numbers given in earlier accounts are due to differences in the length of the working day.

38 ‘Large swan’ and ‘Long Dane’ are among the uncommon sizes.