Page:The Ancient Stone Implements (1897).djvu/626

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RIVER-DRIFT IMPLEMENTS.
[CHAP. XXIII.

Side, and two others at Wallend, one mile west of Barking town. Mr. G. F. Lawrence found an oval implement in situ at Stratford.[1] I have a rude specimen found at Shoeburyness by Mr. B. Harrison.

Returning to London we must notice some discoveries on the southern side of the Thames.

In 1872[2] General Pitt Rivers recorded the finding of a palæolithic implement and a flake in gravel on Battersea Rise, at the junction of Gray shot Road and the Wandsworth Road; and in an excavation for a new house on Battersea Rise,[3] near Clapham Common, on one of the higher gravel-terraces of the Thames, Mr. Worthington Smith picked up a palæolithic implement in 1882.

Mr. G. F. Lawrence has also found two or three implements in gravel at East and West Hill, Wandsworth, on each side of the Wandle, as well as at Earlsfield. One from the latter place, now broken, must originally have been of very large size. This and another are pointed. He has also found one at Lavender Hill, and a small ovate specimen at Roehampton.

At Lewisham also an implement has been discovered. One of ovate form (4 inches) was found in 1874 in gravel on Wickham Road by Mr. A. L. Lewis, and by him liberally added to my collection.

Further south, in a branch of the valley of the Ravensbourne, on a patch of gravel upwards of 300 feet above Ordnance Datum, Mr. George Clinch,[4] in 1880, found several ovate palæolithic implements, and in subsequent years many more; in all some fifty[5] in number.

About four miles farther east, at Green Street Green,[6] about 250 feet above Ordnance Datum, Mr. H. G. Norman found two palæolithic implements, on the surface of what is now a dry part of the valley of the river Cray, about two miles above its present source. They are both of ovate form, one much like Fig. 420, the other like Fig. 468. Each is about 51/2 inches in length. "The gravel at this spot has afforded remains not only of the mammoth, but also of the musk-ox."

  1. Nature, vol. xxviii. p. 367.
  2. Q.J.G.S., vol. xxviii., 1872, p. 462.
  3. Journ. Anth. Inst., vol. xii. p. 230.
  4. "Note on the Disc. at Church Field, West Wickham," privately printed. Arch. Cant., vol. xiv., 1883, p. 88. Antiq., vol. ix. p. 213. Clinch, "Antiq. Jottings," 1889, pp. 180, 186.
  5. Proc. Soc. Ant., 2nd S., vol. xi. p. 164.
  6. Lubbock, "Preh. Times," 4th ed., p. 355.