102 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NORWICH AND DISTRICT 
as a thatching material. Reed can withstand the varieties of our inclement 
weather while straw would be rapidly deteriorating. 
Greater comfort can be found under a well-thatched roof of Norfolk 
Reed than in any other type of dwelling. 
(k) FLINT KNAPPING 
In the Bridewell Museum at Norwich may be seen a veracious reproduc- 
tion of a flint knapper’s workshop. The oak block, at least 250 years old, 
which has been used in the same family for two centuries, and the simple 
tools and materials of the craft are there preserved as a memorial of a 
dying industry which has persisted for at least two thousand years and is 
now confined to a very few individuals in the town of Brandon, which lies 
on the boundary line between Norfolk and Suffolk. 
The industry derives from the need of pre-historic man for knives, 
hatchets and similar articles for domestic and defensive usage, and in 
many places in the county worked flints are still turned up in the fields. 
Later, the principal task of the knapper was to supply gun flints for 
Africa, and when this trade was at its height, some 250,000 flints per week 
were turned out, in the supply of which Norwich also took a hand. The 
knappers of Brandon are still able to produce beautiful replicas of the early 
flint weapons, and even ornaments. 
Flint is prominent as a building material in Norfolk. Most of the 
churches are of this material, and in the north wall of the Bridewell 
Norwich possesses the finest specimen of squared-flint workmanship in 
England. Decorated flint-work of a very fine type is a feature of St. 
Mary’s-at-Coslany Church. It was probably during the fifteenth century 
that brick began to be used as a building material to the ultimate 
supersession of flint. 
Flint mining is still carried on in the same way and with the same kind 
of tools as it was two thousand years ago, and the industry at Brandon, 
restricted though it may be, is a remarkable survival. 
In the vicinity of Brandon are Grime’s Graves, a wonderful series of 
pre-historic flint mines which have, up to the present, been only partially 
explored. The mines are now under the jurisdiction of the Office of 
Works, and have been placed in charge of a whole-time custodian and may 
be visited for a small charge. 
(7) THE HERRING INDUSTRY 
‘Hereabouts they begin to talk of herrings,’ wrote Defoe when he 
came to our East Anglian coast. And so the Romans had talked in their 
day; and here where the fickle herrings are least uncertain in their 
movements and in greatest abundance they still talk of them. 
But to-day this great fishery is a tragedy. It has been possible and 
not infrequent in recent years for willing fishermen working on the 
