RECENT DISCOVERIES AT OKEFORD 

 FITZ PAINE. 



By C. RICKMAN, Esq. 



|T the commencement of the present month, I was spend- 

 ing a couple of days at Ibberton, when my attention 

 was called by Messrs. Eobert and "Walter Eoss to 

 some remains at the above-mentioned place, and Mr. Robert 

 Boss gave me the large bone I now hold in my hand. I 

 then determined to visit the locality, and from an archaeological 

 and ethnological point of view I was amply repaid. I found 

 a chalk pit of the usual kind, from which the inhabitants 

 of the parishes of Okeford Fitzpaine, Belchalwell, and 

 Ibberton drew chalk for the purpose of flooring pig styes, 

 cottages, and also materials for ramming gate-posts, the pit 

 being situate just outside the village of Okeford Fitzpaine, 

 on the road to Turnworth. I take it the section displayed 

 is a lower chalk without fossils, seeing that the green sand crops 

 out about 200 yards below on the road to Ibberton. I failed to 

 discover any fossils in the chalk. Now we are inside the pit a 

 semi-circular one from which some hundreds of tons of chalk 

 have been excavated. Running the eye along the section thus 

 exposed, I was surprised to see a number of square depressions 

 extending through the surface mould, and about one foot into 

 the chalk, running in straight lines from east to west, on both 

 sides of the pit a series of long trenches, as it were, whose 



