Where is the best place in the United Kingdom to find flint rock?

[JonnyBoy12]

Everyone knows that humans have enjoyed raising fire since the Stone Age, but how did they raise fire without lighters or matches? I would think that they would use two flint rocks to rub together to light some dry moss and leaves, but where do you find this elusive rock in the U.K.? I have been to most parts of this country, and have not seen it in evidence anywhere.

I thank you in advance for your ever helpful replies.

[mike11111]

Flintshire?

[jno]

they may just have found fire started naturally (lightning strikes, eg) and conserved it.

[Buenchico]

Elusive?

When I was a kid (in Ipswich) my father was constantly moaning that our garden seemed to have more flint than soil in it!

East Anglia is definitely the place for flint. This is just up the road from me:
http://www.english-he...ehistoric-flint-mine/

Chris

PS: You don't rub flint stones together to create fire. (You're thinking of wooden sticks). You strike one flint against another to create a spark, which you use to ignite dried vegetation.

[RATTER15]

Haldon Moors in Devon is covered in it.

[Mosaic]

Anywhere with a chalk bedrock will have inclusions of flint, rather like raisins in a scone. In addition lots of flint fragments are found in gravel created by glaciers and pushed around the place - hence the 'essex split' tye of stone you get from garden centres which is mainly dredged up from the bed of the North Sea. This contains a whole mixture of pebbles worn y sea and rive, and flint fragments, ranging from natural nodes that still have the whitish 'crust' on the outside to worked fragments.

Flint is good for making strike-lightsbut isn't the only hunter-gatherer metod known. Using a bowstring to make a fire-drill is another way.
It's thought that people on the move in ancient europe carried smouldering moss and lichen in containers ready to make a camp-fire whenever needed.

[Mosaic]

sorry about my typing, it's rubbish today.

[cc1]

In flat tyres in Norfolk! We were told it was very common after heavy rain to pick up flint damage to tyres, the stuff washes down onto the narrower lanes.

[keenonhist]

Hi jno.
Early humans could have found it also from tar pits that caught alight.Or even from leaking/seeping oil close to the surface again that caught alight. I think it must have taken thousands of years for them to make use of it,I mean lets face it, if you had just come down from the trees would you go any way near a fire?
keenonhist