8
more advice to anyone wishing to know more about
spider recording and study.
Kate Rowland
Some Notes on Gun-Flint Making
On 11th September, 1961, I visited the then
working flint-knappers of Brandon. I took some
photographs and made extensive notes of the
working methods and rates of production.
At one time, several families named Snare,
English and Edwards knapped at Brandon, but since
about 1963, the last remaining vestige of a
Stone Age industry has ceased and it seems to me
that the substance of my 1961 notes should be
recorded and preserved. Although many accounts
of modern flint-knapping have been published, I
have never encountered detailed statistics such
as I noted at the time of my visit.
All that was left of the 1961 old Firm, V. Edwards
& Son was a small museum in their old workshop,
but road widening has now destroyed this relic.
Edwards has now retired and earlier he told me that
his son was "no good" at knapping. In 1961
he employed two men, Fred Avery (aged about 25)
and "Trixie" Drury, aged about 55, who had started
life "in service". Fred Avery, on his own now,
in his late 40's is still knapping gun flints
for the U. S. sporting market.
The flints came from various chalk-pits in Norfolk
and Suffolk: the best had been obtained from near
Sudbury and had white coats. Their supplies
used to come from the Lingheath mine nearby,
until the last miner, Ashley, retired and died in
1938.