6 
The Distribution and Origin of the Shattered Flints and Flint 
Flakes of Devon and Cornwall. 
The ancient Palaeozoic rocks of Devon and Cornwall, dented ^and 
indurated by the eruption of five bosses of granite from Dartmoor to the 
land’s End! are thrust like a gauntleted fist far out into the Atlantic 
unconnected and far removed from any of the secondary 
vet over the high ground of their western extremity, the Rev John BuUer, 
S in 1842, mentions that flints are found on the surface of Cam 
Keniiack and from thence to Tolpedn-Penwith, over a distance of five 
miles^ ; and he suggests that they may have been brought there by the 
ancient Britons for the purpose of forming out of them arrowheads, w 
he says, some of the broken fragments much resemble.’ 5 Sir Henry de 
la Beche, in his geological survey of Cornwall and Devon, + describes the 
occurrence of flint! in the “ raised beaches ” of the coast-line as not of easy 
eX D^g° the past ten years numerous discoveries of apparently isolated 
nests of shattered flints, chiefly along the northern coast-hne, have tan 
made, and many papers have been written on these ‘ 
weapons,” as they have been called ; but further research has shown thatthese 
flakes are scattered over a wide area, and that m fact the “ nests ° J 
a portion of a continuous sheet of scattered chalk fluits which may be traced 
over very large portions of the country. This new aspect of the case is best 
illustrated by one now well-explored district. „ 
Between the village of Croyde and Baggy Point (which forms the noither 
horn of Barnstaple Bay) the flakes are found abundantly m the subsoil at 
the mouth of a small transverse valley, and this flint-find was said to e e 
site of an ancient manufactory of flint implements. But it was soon seen 
that along the coast section the flints might be traced in the subsoil for 
at least half a mile ; that on the exposed weather-beaten headland the soi 
had been weathered off, and there the flints were exposed on the surface ; 
and even from the arable land of the hill top, especially after heavy ram, the 
same shattered flints might be gathered from the soil ; and in this way they 
could be traced eastward through the parishes of Braunton, Hea,nton, and 
Pilton, to Barnstaple— a distance of nine miles. Nor was the trail lost there, 
for eight miles up the valley of the Taw at Bartridge Farm, the flakes were 
most numerous, and extended from the river up the slope of the mil 
to at least 200 feet above the valley ; and still further up the Taw, these 
shattered flints were found at Colleton Barton, to be scattered over an area 
of 400 acres. , A . , . . 
These statements are not founded on any superficial survey o± the district, 
but on discoveries made during a period of many years in carrying out works 
* Statistical Account of the Parish of St. Just , in Penwith, p. 15. 
f p. 429. 
