Writer Charlotte Paton meets a Norfolk man keeping alive an East Anglian craft dating back thousands of years: shaping flint.
If John Lord had not been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, I could easily have believed I was watching a Stone Age man at his craft.
In John's garden on the edge of the Breckland, I saw him take a large misshapen piece of flint, and sitting on his stool in the sun, over the next half an hour fashion it into an axe head. Holding the flint in his hand, he turned it over and over, studying it carefully before deciding which way to tap the stone.
First he hit it with a flint boulder, flaking off the shards of flint, and then an antler hammer, honing the shape ever more accurately. From time to time he rubbed down the 'business end' of the axe with a whetstone to ensure there were no loose fragments; handling the flint with skill and care, for the edge is as sharp as a razor blade.
Every shaped piece of flint is different, and also gives clues about who made it. As John told me: 'During archaeological digs it is possible to tell whether a knapper was left or right handed. It depends on where the pile of waste was in relation to where the knapper sat.'
Watching him hitting the flint with an antler held in his left hand I watched the pile of spoil grow at his right knee while he tells me about his craft.
John and his wife Val worked for many years at Grimes Graves, the Neolithic mining site about seven miles from Thetford. 'I began teaching myself to knap during quiet times,' John explained.
Val, meanwhile, told me of their enjoyment of sharing with the visitors their enthusiasm for this extensive site and the skill our forebears used in extracting the flint. 'The flint was taken from underground, because there it had been protected from the weather,' she said. 'Flint on the surface and the beach have been affected by frost and damaged by glacial movement and is more likely to contain faults.'
Steeped in knowledge of the mines, she also told me – her face animated and her hands busy as she describes the skill of the miners and the knappers – 'The site at Grimes Graves covers almost 100 acres and has at least 433 shafts dug into the chalk. It has been calculated that it took 20 men around five months to move more than 2,000 tonnes of chalk from the larger shafts, before they reached the best quality seams of flint.
'The largest shafts are more than 14m deep and 12m in diameter. The spoil from each shaft was placed into the previously worked one, and as it settled over the years, the area shows numerous circular dips in the landscape,' she said.
'Canon Greenwell was the first to excavate them in 1869. Leslie Armstrong, continued the work in the 1930s, but more than 90pc of the site remains untouched.'
Grimes Graves were principally mined between about 3,000 BC and 1,900 BC. It is thought they continued to be worked after metals started to be used for making tools which were superior to flint ones, but flint was a cheaper option and so the mine continued to be used on a smaller scale for some time.
And, contrary to the 'stone age man' image, both Val and John believe that women may have also knapped flint. The modern-day flint-knapping courses they run show women have a particular knack for the skills involved.
John explained that after tools started to be made of metal, the use for flint diminished until the arrival of the Romans. 'They found it invaluable as a hoggin for their road building and infill for their buildings,' he said. 'Later it was used in the construction of castles and churches in East Anglia, and later for building domestic and public buildings.'
We need look no further than the Guildhall in Norwich completed in 1534, for the evidence to support what John had told me. The exterior wall at the eastern end is faced with chequered flint work, as is the King's Lynn Town Hall. This façade shows the art of building 'flushwork' to very best effect. In architecture, flushwork is the decorative combination on the same flat plane of flint and stone.
Flushwork buildings belong to the Perpendicular style of English Gothic architecture beginning in the early 14th century. The peak period was during the wool boom between about 1450 and the English Reformation of the 1520s. Most of what remains is seen in churches – in parts of Southern England and especially East Anglia.
Another stunning example of the knapper's art is the north wall of the late 14th-century house, the site of which later became the Bridewell in Norwich. The beautiful square-knapped flint wall is generally hailed as the finest of its type in the county.
Then John told me of a resurgence of the use of flint, something I was totally unaware of. 'In the 17th century,' he explained, 'flint became enormously important for the flintlock action needed in firearms. The spark created when flint hits against the steel lid of the flash pan igniting the gunpowder. Millions of them were made –- particularly during the Napoleonic wars.'
It was boom time again for Brandon flint. John explained that in 1790 Philip Hayward received a musket flint army order for 100,000 flints of high quality, and so was born the Brandon Gunflint Company.
At the time of the Napoleonic Wars nine Brandon gunflint makers were commissioned by the Board of Ordnance to supply 360,000 flints a month. A skilled man could make up to 240 of these intricate square flints an hour, each different type of weapon requiring a different size. The flint would last for about 50 shots.
In 1813, just before the Battle of Waterloo 14 Brandon flint masters were supplying more than a million flints a month and employing around 160 knappers and diggers. But by 1816 the orders had dwindled to nothing. The vagaries of demand was only one problem. The apprenticeship to learn the skill of a knapper lasted for seven years, but boys became reluctant because the dust created was a killer.
In the latter part of the 19th century more than 20 million gunflints were shipped from Brandon to Zanzibar (Africa), packed in old flour barrels, at 29,000 per barrel. At the end of the 19th century, Brandon was supplying about four million gunflints a year to Africa, China, Java, Sumatra, Malay and Latin America, the industry employing around 36 men.
The flint mechanism was eventually replaced following the invention of the percussion cap and the later breech-loading cartridge, and the industry gradually dwindled. Even so, at the end of the Second World War there were still around five knappers left at Brandon. The last of them, Fred Avery, died in 1996.
But flint still lives on in the 21st century. John supplies flint to builders and trains them in the skills required to repair and build with flint. John showed me the flat corner pieces he was making for a restoration, which is very skilful work, requiring patience and accurate colour matching.
'Most of the flint in England is found in an extensive band which runs from north to south through central Norfolk,' he said. 'It's grey in colour in the north, becoming darker further south. I take great care comparing each piece to the one I am going to place it next to, to ensure a good match.'
The industry may be thousands of years old, but its raw material is even older – much, much older. Flint was formed about 65 million years ago when shellfish, which thrived in large numbers in the warm seas which at that time covered much of the area that is now the British Isles, died. Their shells produced chalk, and the decomposing sponge-like creatures which were also prolific at that time, became trapped in the chalk and formed silica or flint.
The round pieces of flint seen in buildings are the core of the flint that remains after the flints for guns have been flaked away.
Intricate work known as candles can be seen on the church of Ss Peter and Paul at Cromer. But if you keep your eyes open when driving round you will see numerous examples of flintwork all over East Anglia. Every one is different, and in need of closer examination.
Somehow, too, you feel the need to run your fingers across the beautiful and tactile work. It seems only touch can help us fully appreciate the ancient skills needed at this meeting place of geology, artistry and practicality.
John and Val give flint knapping demonstrations, and replicate prehistoric artefacts and run courses. They are based at The Old Mill House, Chalk Row, Gooderstone, King's Lynn PE33 9BW, 01366 328080 or val.john@flintknapping.co.uk.
Grimes Graves, which is run by English Heritage, is near Lynford (sat nav IP26 5DE, signposted just north of Brandon on the A1065, and also off the A134). It is now closed for the season but re-opens on March 30 next year.
www.english-heritage.org.uk
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