PREHISTORIC ARMS FACTORY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 41, 28 May 1910, Page 10

PREHISTORIC ARMS FACTORY

Discoveries made on the Kentish bank of the Thames, between Erith and Gravesend, show that the district was a centre of activity as far back as the Stone A are, when prenistoric Britons chipped flints in order to manufacture weapons and tools. Further inland the old Roman road and the Roman remains that have been unearthed at various times leave no room for doubt that there were places of importance in the neighborhood. During the last few months some very interesting discoveries have been made at Northfleet, where a small stream flows into the Thames. It is believed that this stream was large enough in earlier centuries to carry the craft of the Britons and Romans, and later of the Danes, who are known to have used the natural facilities of the place in connection with marauding journeys into the interior. The rising land on the /banks of this stream is now the property of a cement-manufacturing comipany, and during extensive excavations connected with the business the_ top of the ancient chalk deposit was laid bare. This was the natural surface three or fotir thousand years ago, and it seems to have been the site a prehistoric Woolwich. Flint weapons were found lying about in ,<?reat nrofusion, in conjunction with stores of flint boulders and innumerable chips and fragments. Hundreds j of the flint weapons have been collected, and are being placed in a local museum. Specimens are still bciny found as the excavations .proceed, and the complete collection promises to be one of the largest and most varied in existence. The weapons are in all stages of manufacture, and it is quite evident that they were the product of a large and probably profitable factory. Close at hand have been found the remains of a Roman villa, and the excavation of the walls has shown that beneath the foundations of the building lie the fragments of a still older dwelling. The deposit of soil by the streams seems to have been fairly rapid in that portion of the country, because a verv considerable depth of earth overlies remains that had their origin within historic times. Antiquarians are