Knapping Flints 55 



round them. For the benefit of those who do not 

 know this pleasant village, it may be as well to say 

 that it stands on the Little Ouse, where that river, 

 gliding over its almost level and weedy bed, passes 

 between Norfolk and Suffolk, on to Downham to join 

 the Great Ouse. Its great rabbit warrens are well 

 known, and it has a whiting and some other small 

 factories ; but from time immemorial flint- pits and 

 knapping-sheds have formed its glory. While a sand 

 mound was being excavated in 1865, a subterranean 

 passage was found at a depth of eighty feet, that long 

 ages ago had apparently been searched for flints. At 

 all events, there was found sticking in one of the sides 

 a strange old pickaxe, made by putting a flint edge on 

 an antler's horn. Very likely it had been used for 

 excavating flint from the soft chalk by the artificers 

 who fashioned arrow-heads for the savages who in- 

 habited ancient Britain, and might have been left 

 there by some prehistoric digger. However, it seems 

 certain that in very remote ages the peculiar value 

 of the flints in the neighbourhood was known and 

 prized. When Canon Greenwell investigated the 

 well-known ' Grimes Graves,' situated in a wood close 

 to the old road leading from Brandon to SwafTham, he 

 found about eighty picks made from the antlers of red 

 deer, which in all probability had been used to get the 

 flint out of the chalk. It would seem, therefore, that 

 the flint-knappers, when they compete as they have 

 often done at exhibitions for a prize given to the 



