REMARKABLE DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT MINES IN THE EASTERN COUNTIES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 157, 9 February 1871, Page 7

REMARKABLE DISCOVERY OF ANCI EN T M INES IN TH E EASTERN COUNTIES.

For more than two years, at intervals, the Rev. Canon Crreenwell, of Durham, has been engaged in the investigation of the nature of a large groupe of circular pits, situate near the town of Brandon in the valley of the Ouse. The results of these costly and laborious works are of the greatest interest. The pits in question are known as the " Grimes Graves," aud the country around them abounds upon the surface in flint implements and flakes, and most numerously near the pits, or "graves." The " graves " have, in fact, proved to be the shafts (in which the filling in materials have settled) of extensive underground flint mines, to which the shafts are upwards of 200 in number and generally about 25 feet apart. The old shafts appear to have been successfully filled up by the debris from the new ones throughout the group, which having settled now present the appearance of bowl-shaped depressions, about four feet deep, and have been variously regarded as graves, villages, &c. The one investigated was 28 feet in diameter at the mouth, and narrowed gradually to 12 feet in diameter at the bottom, which was 39 feet below the surface. At the bottom was the stratum of puro flint, seven inches in thickness, the working of which had led to this extensive series of mines. After the flint had been removed from the bottom, galleries wore driven iv all directions, being mostly about three feet in height in the chalk above the flint, and varying from three feet to seven feet in width. The flint was worked upon the bottoai and under the sides as much as possible. The galleries ran one into another, and extended also from shaft to shaft. There ia little doubt that the whole area occupied by the "Grimes Graves" is a complete network of underground galleries, which, judging from the remarkable finds raado by Mr. • Green well, wonld yield a .vast quantity of- ancient^ remains. The laborious work of sinking the* shafts, excavating -t«he galieriea, and- getting up the '"flint bad been. j r. : done •b^ p^cks made of the raitler of the red deer, of a. larger, species than now lives In Scotland, These picks were made fronVaWut 10 to 18 inches "of the main horn and the brow tine, and upwards of 80, ' independently of fragments,

were found in tlve workings, in all stages of wear, The burr ends of tho horns had also been used as hammer*, Troughout the workings only on? stone hammer was found, and that of basalt. The marks made by it could bo fitted on the sides of the chalk walls, and pick marks were abundant everywhere. One bone pin and a bone instrument bruised at the ends were also found. The extensive mining operations could not have been carried on in the dark, and it is believed that several small peices of chalk containing cups, one of Avhich was placed on a ledge of projecting chalk, were lamps used by the ancient miners. In one gallery two picks were found at the end lying point to point, as if used by a left-handed and a right-handed man, and laid down at the end of a day's wof*k, The roof of this gallery had fallen in, aud the debris had never been removed till recently, when the tools of the ancient workmen were found as left, perhaps, 3000 years ago. Singularly no pottery was found, nearly tho whole of the implements used by the miners were made from the &hed horns of the red deer, and, with one exception, all from the burr end. These were found in tho shaft, but more numerously in fie workings. The people who fabricated the flint implements seemed to have lived on the spot, and to have thrown their refuse down the old mine shafts, for at various depths were found the split bones of the ox (the small bos iongifrons), the goat, sheep, pig and dog — the latter the only carnivora. From the Fauna and other points the rev. explorer places the ago of these ancient mines in the early part of the Neolithic (later atone) period before metal was generally known in Britain. A special meeting of the Ethnological Society of London was hold to hear Canon Greenwell,s own account of his remarkable discoveries,