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V. Stone Implements from the Neighbourhood of
Chelmsford, Essex.
By Henry Corder.
[Read April 30th, 1881.]
Plate II.
About three years since a man who was formerly in our
employ brought to me a very fine specimen of a Neolithic
spear-head, dagger, or knife, measuring six and a half inches
long by two and a half inches wide. It is very thin, and
beautifully chipped, but not polished. Near one end are
notches, three on one side and two on the other, apparently
to serve as catches when binding the celt to the shaft or
handle.
The specimen came from a gravel pit near the "Admiral's
Park," Chelmsford; and the workman asserts that while
standing at the bottom of the pit, and working at the gravel
with a pole, he disengaged it from a seam of larger stones
about twelve feet from the surface. The soil above is not
very thick, so that there would be many feet of gravel above
the implement. The celt has no signs of wear or of gravel
stains upon it, and I am told that it could not have come
from undisturbed gravel. In support of the one theory, I
have the man's own statement that he poked it out himself
from the stones which he considered to be undisturbed.
This would be a seam probably almost free from the red fer-
ruginous colour and adhesive qualities of ordinary gravel.
At the spot in question the stratum is evidently, I think,
valley gravel from the River Cann, about 200 yards from the
bank, and perhaps thirty feet above the water level. In
support of the other view, viz., that the soil was not undis-
turbed, we have the assertion of a former owner of the pit
that a quantity of bones of animals, and, I think, stags'