NEOLITHIC SITES IN UPPER VALLEY OF ESSEX CAM. 63
flint does not extend over the alluvium in the valley but occurs
upon the chalk slope and well on to the clay of the hill top.
The implements are of the usual character—flakes, cores,
scrapers, hammer stones, &c. The patina tends to be white
on flakes and implements of the lower slopes, mottled blue
higher up as the percentage of clay increases, and ochreous
on the clay. Here also a greenish glaze on unpatinated black
flint is not uncommon.
It seems probable that the earthworks in Grimsditch Wood
(2) which adjoins the site, may be the remains of a Neolithic
fortification or camp. Mr. Guy Maynard has made a survey
of this site, and it is highly desirable that at some future time
excavations should be undertaken to determine the period of
these earthworks. On the slope west of the wood there are
three basin-shaped hollows, of which Mr. Maynard, in an unpub-
lished paper, says:—" On the north west slopes there are a
series of irregular hollows which can be nothing else than old
chalk or flint pits, but the period at which these were worked is
uncertain. The soil around these pits is full of definitely worked
flint flakes of a mottled blue and white glossy surface and a
number with the older white patination. More significant still
is the. presence of large flints bearing ancient patinated chip-
pings on their surface. They cluster thickly round one of the
pits and the whole evidence strongly suggests a group of flint
mines of the Cissbury type."
VIII. Saffron Walden. Pleasant Valley. Essex. Sheet IX.
N.W.
Longitude 0° 14' 49" E., latitude 52° 0' 45" N. Elevation
300 feet O.D., about 150 feet above the level of the Cam. Situa-
ted on the fields between the Friends' School and the fever hospi-
tal, on the edge of the plateau, about f mile south of the church.
Although shown as Chalk on the survey map (12) this area
has a thin covering of Boulder Clay with beds of loam and
gravel, probably Mid-glacial. The soil is a clayey loam.
Flakes, calcined flints and rough scrapers are common, the
bulk have the blue mottled patina but unpatinated black and
grey specimens are not uncommon.
This site was first noted in 1880 when the Friends' School
Natural History Journal records the finding of flakes and cal-