66 
THE ESSEX NATURALIST. 
and at head of a subsidiary valley draining into the Elmdon 
water course just east of the upper farm at Bilden End. This 
area was derelict for many years and has only again been brought 
under cultivation since 1912 (13). 
The site is well within the Boulder Clay area and is surrounded 
by typical oak-ash woods. A small inlier of the Chalk occurs at 
Bilden End, and the chalk of the valley slope outcrops north of 
Chiswick Hall at a distance of about f mile away. The soil is a 
tenacious clay, difficult to work and drying and cracking in 
summer. There is not a great number of stones present. 
The nearest spring-heads are at least a couple of miles away 
but there would be ample water in ponds and hollows of the clay. 
The implements from this site are very striking, and consist 
of polished axes, rough chipped adzes and picks, scrapers of the 
racloir type, nodule scrapers, hollow scrapers, points, flake 
knives, hammer stones, etc. With the exception of the axes 
and adzes the implements are of the same type as those from the 
Newport and other sites, but as a whole they are larger. The 
nodule implements often bear glacial striae on their crust, and 
the various qualities of the flint from which they are made 
points to the fact that the material was obtained from Bould.r 
Clay erratics, though occasionally the material or the finished 
implements themselves may have been brought from sites on the 
chalk or gravel. Some implements show a yellow patination 
varying from cream to an ochreous brown, and a few show the 
blue mottled patina common to the edge of the clay lands. The 
bulk of the material is unpatinated, and exhibits a peculiar green¬ 
ish glaze highly characteristic of worked flint found in Boulder 
Clay soil. This glaze often passes into a yellow mottle or “ toad 
belly ” patina and through that to the ochreous patination 
already mentioned. 
This site was discovered by Mr. L. V. Nash, of Elmdon, 
and is of exceptional interest in that it is probably a site of 
habitation established well within the forest of the clay area. 
No trace of earthworks has so far been noted and it is difficult 
to suggest why such a spot should have been chosen. Apparently 
the site remained [inhabited, for late Keltic or Roman pot-sherds 
are common, and some years ago the writer noticed a large frag¬ 
ment of a quern of Hertfordshire pudding-stone on a heap of 
stones by the field road that crosses the area. 
