74 PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 



STONE AND FLINT IMPLEMENTS 



In the number and variety of its Flint Implements, the 

 Middle Cotteswold area is exceedingly rich.* In almost 

 any recently ploughed field, especially after rain, flints 

 bearing undoubted marks of human manufacture may be 

 picked up by the dozen. At the top of Crickley Hill, 

 near the Air Balloon Inn, flints have been found in such 

 numbers, and in such a variety of stages of manufiicture, 

 as to suggest that here was the site of a flint factory. 

 One of the most diligent and observant Cotteswold 

 collectors is the Rev. J. H. Cardew, Rector of Wingfield, 

 Wilts, for some years a resident in Cheltenham. Many 

 thousands of flints gathered on the Cotteswolds have, he 

 says, passed through his hands, and the results he has 

 embodied in a valuable monograph, with a great number 

 of illustrations.! The most numerous implements, he 



The methods hy wliich the stone and flint implements were manufactured are 

 treated of in detail in Sir John Kvans's well-known work. But on the manner in 

 which hammers and axes, such .as have occasionally been exhibited at our Club 

 meetitfgs, were perforated and externally shaped, it may be of interest to supplement 

 Sir John Evans's suggestions of chiselling, grinding, and drilling, by stating how 

 similar instruments arc made to-day on the comparatively unknown islands of New 

 Britain and Duke of York. Until the .advent of the white trader a few years ago, the 

 natives of these islands made the whole of their weapons and implements of stone, so 

 that in this respect they are a modern type of pre-historic dwellers on the Cotteswolds. 

 The most formidable we.ipon used bv the New Britain natives is a stone club — a large, 

 round ball of stone, with a long wood handle through a hole in its centre. It is made, 

 Mr Wilfred Powell tells us in this way : — •" The n.itive first takes a piece of suitable 

 " granite, which he places in a slow fire of cocoa-nut shells, which give an immense 

 " heat, and allows it to become red-hot. He then, by the aid of a split bamboo, in the 

 " place of tongs, removes it from the fire, and begins to drop water on it drop by drop, 

 " each drop falling exactly on the same place. That portion of the stone on which the 

 " water falls begins to crack and fly off, until the heat has gone out of the stone. He 

 " then repeats the oper.ition until an irregular hole is formed through the centre ; he 

 " then fixes a stick through it, and takes it to a place where there is a large granite 

 " rock in which is a dent like a small basin. He hits the stone upon the rock until 

 "all the rough corners are knocked off, and it is worn fairly round; then takes the end 

 " of the stick, and pressing the stone down into the hollow of the rock makes the stick 

 " revolve rapidly between his hands, weighting it with other stones fastened to the top 

 "of the stick, until that side of the stone is worn perfectly smooth and round. He 

 " then shifts the other side of the stone downwards and works at that until both are 

 " smooth and even." — " Wanderings in a Wild Country," p. i6o. 



■)■ Trans. Bris. and Glos. Archseo. Soc, Vol. xvi., p. 246, et seq. 



