RECENT DISCOVERIES AT OKEFORD 

 FITZ PAINE. 



By C. RICKMAN, Hs^. 



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 

 Eoss 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 di-ew 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. Eunning 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 



