Grimes Graves Neolithic Mine Visit With Will Lord

A Grimes Graves visit is something I've wanted to tick off for a long time and when Will Lord posted some dates on his website I knew I had to act. Will's family have been custodians of the site (which contains over 400 neolithic flint mines) for many decades and whilst there are three pits to descend the Canon Greenwell pit isn't accessed much at all.

I've had 1-2-1 tuition from Will before  during a 2016 work sabbatical I was lucky enough to get, and whilst half the afternoon was dedicated to knapping which it would be great to practice again the real draw was getting into the afore mentioned pit which is one of around sixty that have had an exploratory dig.

Whilst other attendees had arrived before me I was the first to get to the large tent that was erected, perhaps they were staying warm in their cars on a cool and windy day. I said hello to Will and Jason, his help for the day. Jason was just finishing butchering a small Muntjac for the dinner to come. It was also  noticeable just how audible the Skylark song was from all sides.

After a brew Will sat us down and started doing an introductory talk both about the day and about various tools and artefacts that he has. He actually mentioned the Skylark song saying that the site was talking to us.

  

As he finished laying them out in a display, with a small Mammoth tooth amongst them, the English Heritage staff signalled that the pit was open and that the portable winch was in place. We went in to the warm visitor centre to get our harnesses and helmets on.

As we walked over, again with the Skylark song filling the air, we passed the two other pit entrances (with this being one of them). Once you are past the visitor centre the crater like landscape becomes evident and the size of them is impressive.

Will asked us to be quiet as we waited to descend, and once we got down to the pit's floor stone too, just to be able to take in the atmosphere of this special place. Will went first and I was the third attendee down. This video at the 4 minute mark shows the ladder down into the darkness.

The winch cable makes any looking up quite hard to do as it is right behind the back of your head. but I slowed every few rungs to look around as I descended ever further into the blackness with the rungs getting ever colder to the touch. Will unclipped me and I turned to sit down and chose a raised ledge about one o'clock from the ladder to sit cross legged on.

Initially you see the light from the hatch, even on a dull day,  seemingly extra bright compared to the dark recesses, you look around and everything seems gloomy but as  your eyes, ears and senses start to adjust to your new environment and you feel the cold  floor, the paste like chalk dust and see the entrances to the various chambers become clearer.

We occasionally caught the odd quiet instruction from the staff at the winch but other than that there was little noise. Just before the last attendee came down there was a delay and for a precious moment there literally was silence. Once we were all gathered with two staff members Will left a moment before speaking and did a little talk.

There are  six galleries in total and we were free to sensibly and respectfully explore with Will taking up position in gallery number three. I'd strongly recommend that you bring a head torch for this experience.

The reason for Will taking up residence in number three is because this has several treasures  in the tunnel-like passage which we all needed to navigate to get to him at the end. Along the way we saw the feminine looking tabular flint mother stone which the miners possibly left because of this 'Mother Earth' connection. Will touched it with some reverence as he passed it.

This is also one of two discarded antler picks in the narrow passage. There were actually nearly sixty antler tools in this passage originally and mostly left-handed antlers which made the perfect tool for a right-handed miner.

Talking of the narrow passage I have included this anonymous picture of a female attendee's posterior to demonstrate just how confined some of the access is. In all seriousness this experience isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea due to the dark, confined space and the depth of descent.

We went in to the end of the gallery one by one and he asked me to put my head torch out, inch towards a small opening in the wall to my left, and then switch on my head torch again...I let out an audible gasp. This was literally a look back in time to a small tunnel that hasn't been entered for 4,000 years with lumps of chalk and antler picks festooning the floor. A visit to a museum or castle takes you back but this is the real deal.

Will also handed us a pick to handle, I'm pretty sure that it is one that revealed itself during a small cave collapse that is mentioned in this video at the 19 minute mark. It felt so comfortable to hold and there were still hand marks that the last user had left on it. Once we were done we had to reverse crawl out of the  narrow tunnel avoiding the  queue, supports and artefacts in the process.

This gallery nearer the ladder also had several antler tools in, plus discarded flint, chalk and the remains of a fox which had fallen in some time ago.

This was one of the smallest and most accessible of the galleries to the right of the ladder (four o'clock if your back was to it) and it's most noticeable feature was a small bat roosting to the right of the torch light. 

Every nook and cranny that you shone light down seemed to offer the promise of something to see or ponder over.

 I spent a fair bit of time in this gallery. This a shot down the long corridor near to the ledge I initially sat on. A battery had become dislodged in my head torch so I followed an attendee in because the light on the way back (from the tunnel) made it navigable but I had to use his torch light to miss the supports which we'd been told to not bump into.

  

At the entrance there were two antler tools, one resting and the other one wedged. Polished axes were the tool of choice through the chalk and the antler tools were used to prise out the flint nodules. 

Upon reaching the end it revealed several back filled tunnels which were really filled up, they didn't halfheartedly put the spoil back. Perhaps as well as the waste logistics it was another 'Mother Earth' moment for them. As the attendee with the torch turned to go his torchlight appeared to flicker as he scrambled back and it almost looked like the tallow fuelled lights I assumed the workers may have used to mine by.

I knew that the folk with Will were slowly coming to an end so having finished my exploring I decided to just sit in a quieter part of the pit and wait for the tour's natural end. This is to the left of gallery three but I elected to go in the area directly in front of number three's entrance so I could see when things ended.

 This is the sitting area I plumped for, noone else in there and just a little light from the main area to the left. As Will made his way out of the 'time capsule' bit I realised that I must have been sat there a while because I had become accustomed to it and I had to shield my eyes from the torch light.

As the winch cable came down to get us we were chatting to Will and I asked him if they used tallow lamps when mining. He said that checks had been done for soot and none was found, but that said the original entrance hole that they dug  was massive and would have let a large amount of light in. I was last so I grabbed a selfie in the bowels of the Earth and as I put my phone away I noted, predictably, that there was no service.

As I ascended the ladder it was again hard to look up due to the winch cable so I just focused on the ladder rungs which seemed never ending but got brighter and brighter as I neared the hatch. We were told that the oxygen level  is actually slightly higher underground and I indeed started panting once unclipped, due to the oxygen change, climbing the ladder briskly, both or neither? I'll never know.

Having been in our own little world it was impossible to know how long we'd been down there as you are in the moment with just the noise our group made and no outside references. As I walked back I noticed just how grubby I looked and that the  song of the Skylarks was still surrounding us.

After handing our gear back in to the centre we got another brew and Will started a hand axe making demonstration whilst Jason finished the venison soup/ stew dinner.

I've always had a rather 'lame game' palette so I wondered what I'd make of the stronger venison taste, actually I really enjoyed it so credit to Jason there.

After dinner Will resumed his demonstration and then produced enough suitable pieces for everyone to have a go at their own hand axe too.

I'd previously contacted Will to ask if I could attempt an arrowhead instead and was given a suitable piece to crack on with. This is in the early stages after an initial knap of the edges, a little bit by Will but a decent amount by me too.

You realise just how strong Will's hands must be because whilst I elected to knap with the correct technique I was shown on my 1-2-1 I found that it it was making the hand holding the pressure flaker a tad uncomfortable. I did get the main man to deal with a small area of flint that was thicker than the rest that I struggled with.

We all had eye protection of course and we occasionally showered each other with shards during the afternoon but I'm so glad I checked my cup before having a Growers Cup coffee as there was a lump of flint in there! It was small and blunt but a small sharp fragment could have caused internal mischief.

I finished off my arrow head by both removing the diagonal bit at the back of it and making the edges rounded, I haven't taken many large surface flakes off it but I'm happy with it. I did an arrow head with a view to mounting it on an atlatl dart but I may use it to practice making an arrow...A project for another day.

A sudden project that I have in the here and now is some polishing, lots of it. When Will finished his hand axe demonstration he said whoever promises to polish it can have it and my mouth opened. I've got a bit of work to do.

Having finished my knapping ahead of those doing hand axes I started to do a little bit of initial grinding. Here you can see the barely started one I'll be working on at top left, with a finished one from Will's collection below right. I'll work on one side at a time so I can see progress.

I asked for some guidance on doing the edges and you can see Will has generated a dull spark near his right hand thumb. This might be an interesting fire lighting project with a bit of amadou held on the side of the axe.

4 o'clock arrived and we had reached the end. I went into the centre to have a look at the display in there which can also be seen online here. There is also a Will Lord leaflet in there too. 

The site is so large that a photo at ground level doesn't do it justice so I took a picture of a picture in the exhibition. I can't ever see myself going down Grimes Graves again because it's one of those things where the first visit is the best visit. 

As I came out I thanked Will and Jason and said goodbye. I drove to the toilets for a pit stop before the journey as they are some way from the centre. As I got in the car I noticed that as we had finished so had the Skylarks.

I watched Will's Grimes Grave tour video the next day to work out the  timings I'd included as hot links in this blog and do you know what I got butterflies watching it. that Tells me what a great experience I had, as does the ache of muscles from crawling.

Will Lord 1-2-1 Day

I only met  Will Lord fairly recently at the now defunct Wild Food and Chilli Fair (well defunct in that the Wild Food bit has now gone). It wasn't overly busy there so I got to spend a lot of time chatting to him and his wife, and indeed got a really nice picture of his son with the rather fab  Wild Man of the Woods.

 

If that wasn't enough, Will had offered a load of Lime lengths to a good home on Facebook, I asked if it was possible to pick some up at the show and blow me he brought some along! Not only did the solid length provide me with copious amounts of tough, long and top quality lime bast cordage (a length of which I showed John Rhyder who confirmed it was good on this Spring course I did) but made some peachy bowdrill baseboards. 

Onto the more recent meeting with Will, namely at the rather fine May Day meet in Kent, with his Primal Action Man.  I got to have a crack at a flint arrowhead but didn't get to finish it however I've started using it with a steel for firelighting using the end to slowly 'knap' it a bit smaller. It chucks out lots of decent sparks by the way.

As part of my sabbatical I wanted to spend some time with Will in a course type way at his place in Suffolk, however Will has reined in the courses he does a bit as he has started doing more school visits in midweek. Actually I had discussed booking some time with him at the May meet and despite the fact that a 1-2-1 is more expensive (obviously) he made a good point; on a course he will always be around to help, but such is the nature of the beast that you'll spend most of the day looking at the back of his head. That point, quite literally sold a 1-2-1. My home in Herfordshire isn't geographically well placed for outdoor stuff but this is one of the nice expections in that had to just do a slingshot around Bury St. Edmunds to see Will at his house.

 Anyway, once the day came I headed off and a little over an hour later I was pulling up Will's drive (the place is easy to find) to find him waiting for me. Whilst he made me a tea I unloaded my stuff like lunch, camera, tripod and so on and then sat and had a chat before we started. Whilst we were talking Primal man let the side down but I was alert to it and managed to head him off at the pass. 

 

Will is of course probably best known for his flint work but I'd asked if I could do some basic knapping and make an atlatl (which is usually pronounced ahtul-ahtul). There were several suggestions for the atlatl dart wood but I settled on some Lemonwood which is a 'belly wood' used on Will's bowmaking course and has an almost unnatural flexibility to it, this was to be coupled with a launcher cut down length of Yew from a bow that a student over worked in one section. The Lemonwood dart needed some meat taking off and a good sand and I cracked on with that whilst Will fashioned the launcher which was chin to finger-tips in measurement. After that we used pine pitch to fasten a peg to the launcher and cut a L -shaped arrangement (an elbow) at the dart tip to receive a flint tip.

Will showed me a few brief knapping moves as he fashioned what's called a crested flint tip which essentially means a piece with a triangular cross-section which will fit a treat into the dart's elbow. The above shot is of the pair of us back filling any space between the tip and the dart with pitch and then binding this union with nettle fibres on an abraded section. 

 

I took this close up of the finished tip and I couldn't believe what a thing of beauty we'd created at the business end. Straight after this we did a basic fletching using Goose feathers. I had some eagle feathers from this half day but sadly they weren't from the same wing (this matters as they are curved differently) and couldn't be used. We cut the quill at a shallow angle just before the vanes stop at the thick end to gives us a flap to allow us to marry it to the dart shaft. The other end was trimmed with a little vane left and again, pitch and nettle fibres secure two feathers. The other shot is of the two pieces married up at the rear.

Once we'd completed the set Will did the above video talking through the design and then we took a short walk to an open area to try it out.

To throw or not to throw? I'd got a fit for purpose atlatl but of course there was the risk of snapping the flint tip off on a stone in the ground. Will brought along a flightless atlatl he had to practice with before giving mine an outing. You almost have to unlearn the art of throwing and adopt a very overarm action. I was taken through a basic throw, a power throw and then a running throw and thankfully there was a modicum of technique showing through as the above movie demonstrates...I've just got to remember to put my steadying hand underneath the shaft and not on the top.

We did a have a slight distraction during our efforts, we could hear what we thought was a small bird cheeping in the long grass near us that turned out to be a Shrew half consumed by a Grass Snake! The two of us staring down may have put the snake off because the Shrew wriggled free and sped off. 

That brought us nicely to lunch time and I'd gone a bit overboard with mine so Will gallantly stepped in and helped me polish it off. I gave Primal a Jaffa cake as a piece offering and he seemed to rather enjoy them.

And then onto a flint knapping session after lunch. Whilst I'm currently trying to toughen my hands up at the moment to cope with learning the hand drill I was wondering what sort of a pounding my softie hands might get and to be honest they were fine on a half day.

Obviously Will led the afternoon's proceedings but as you can see in the above shot I tried wherever possible to point out the next step because it would be too easy to just say 'Yes' when Will finished explaining. 

A teardrop shaped spear head was followed by a tanged arrowhead and this is a closeup of Will touching up the arrowhead for me to then be let loose on it. There was a mantra of words coming out during the knapping like platform, abraid, hammer, coronet, tea...I never said that they were all knapping words did I? Will's wife Sarah kept us well supplied with beverages.

 

The two finished pieces together and the arrowhead in the space that the original flake occupied. Now I'm not going to glibly state that I could have managed either of these pieces both in terms of timings and standard without Will's sage and very patient tutelage. He did of course have a large part in their creation but who wants to take home a piece that's only a third done? That said he explained and explained again all the techniques to me so that it went in and I did find myself re-capping on what I'd been shown on the drive home.

 If I was about to start again I'd really work on improving the force of my hammer action as I wasn't connecting as well as I often could have done, this can mean that either nothing happens, or piece comes off smaller than expected due to the lack of shockwave or indeed sends a weak shock into the flint that weakens it so it reacts to another big hit in a different way). I possibly defeated myself at the beginning by aiming a powerful hit but someway off target which resulted in a sizable slab becoming instantly neutraliused.

I have done a good amount of 1-2-1 sessions during my sabbatical and this was no different in that it overran, by some way. Neither of us had a watch on and I recall checking my phone at 3:20 thinking that we've got plenty of time to draw the knapping to a close and the time just flew. Will was right  about the value of a 1-2-1, you pay several times more than someone on a group class, but you take away many times more memories, information and goodies from a day like this. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Oh, and I was one of the last people to see Will before he had this closer than close shave the next day with a piece of Obsidian!