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 3/4 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 Boulder
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.