Palaeolithic flint working site, Gant's Pit or Pound Farm Pit, Dovercourt (EHER 3394)

Gant's Pit at Dovercourt has yielded the most significant collection of Palaeolithic worked flints and faunal material in Essex. The site was visited regularly by W. Underwood between 1908 and 1913 and by S.H. Warren in the first two decades of the 20th century, and a large collection of Palaeolithic worked flint implements was recovered from the site, along with animal and fish bone. Artefacts recorded from this site include 208 handaxes, five axe rough-outs and numerous flakes and flint cores, as well as faunal remains including the bones of beaver, elephant, ox and halibut. These finds are thought to represent a Palaeolithic flint-working site.

Palaeolithic flints and contemporary animal bones from a gravel pit at Pond Farm, Upper Dovercourt, in 1914. <1> <2> Roe lists 208 hand-axes, 5 rough-outs, many flakes, cores etc, in various museums, variously marked 'Dovercourt', 'Dovercourt Pit', 'Gant's Pit' and 'Upper Dovercourt'. <3> Also called "Gant's Pit". <3> The actual position of this pit seems uncertain. The NGR quoted above is from ref <1>. But sites EHER 3393 and EHER 3395 which appears to be the same pit, give TM 240 313 and TM 242 313. EHER 3395 may duplicate this entry. EHER 3395 has since been reallocated. The location of Gant's Pit has now been established by John Wymer as centred on TM 241 313. <4> In <5> Wymer gives an approximate NGR of TM 240 313 for this site. Wymer <5> describes this as the richest Palaeolithic hand-axe site in Essex, "the former pit lay in the north west angle of the junctions of the main Harwich Road and the road to Parkeston Quay. It has since been levelled and is now occupied by a school and playing field". The gravel here is part of a north-easterly ridge of gravel bearing little or no relation to the present course of the Stour. The gravel pit was infilled in 1978 <4>. The first finds were made at Gant's Pit between 1908 and 1913 by gravel workers under instruction from Underwood <6>, and included 'flakes, implements and bones', the latter including rhinoceros, red and fallow deer. Details were published later <2>. At least 150 hand-axes had been found, and animals represented also included elephant and, unusually, a Halibut clavicle. According to <2>, bones had been found much earlier by workmen who sold them to a rag and bone merchant. <7> lists beaver, straight-tusked elephant and mammoth. However, it is not certain whether these finds came from pits at this level or were dredged from the river. Warren <8> adds ox to the list, but emphasises that the elephant remains were not mammoth. Although Underwood claimed that the best finds came from the London Clay, Warren states the workmen said they were scattered throughout the body of the gravel. He demonstrated that the depth of burial was a major factor in the patination of the artefacts: in the upper part patinated, in the lower part not, in the middle, mixed. His collection in the British Museum shows that most of the finds can be classed as sharp or slightly rolled. Warren <9> <10> thought the gravel containing the finds to be a distinct deposit, a "local redistribution of the gravelly material on the brow of the Stour Valley". The fresh condition of the artefacts suggests one industry or period is represented. "If the relatively small number of ovate and cordate hand-axes are removed, the industry bears a remarkable resemblance to that of the Swanscombe Middle Gravels or Furze Platt in the Thames Valley". Material from the pit is distributed around several museums, but the major collection is in the British Museum. <5> - <19> Warren notes <> that "there can be no doubt that the Dovercourt implements represents the relics of a local living site that were all swept up together in a bank of sand and gravel; possibly during an exceptionally high flood or it might be as an outwash fan far above the valley floor, as the result of a 'cloud-burst,' or from the melt". Warren also proposes an explanation for the lack of working debris at the site, suggesting that the preliminary preparation of the flint nodules must have taken place elsewhere. 2001. Excavation in the grounds of Spring Meadow School, the grounds incorporate the site of the former Gant's Pit. Two test pits were dug into a sloping bank exposing the sediments once exploited by the Gants Pit quarry. Two main sedimentary units were identified, a river gravel and, beneath this, a horizontally bedded sand. A significant number of Palaeolithic artefacts were recovered in situ in the gravel, notably hand axe thinning flakes. It was established that the same sediments probably occur over the whole of the southern part of the school grounds, although the gravel appears to be thinner to the west, giving way to thicker sand in that direction. The sand became less weathered with depth and it is suggested that it might be calcareous at lower levels and might be the source of the bones previously reported from Gants Pit. <20> Site Assessment = The richest Palaeolithic hand-axe site in Essex. <5> Information from NHRE import: The evidence suggests that the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic material (EHER 3393) are from the same site. <21> Situated on Pound Farm, Upper Dovercourt, at the junction of the Parkeston and Upper Dovercourt roads - sited by field inspector to TM 2406 3134. <21> See also <22> <23>.