Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Two Palaeolithic handaxes from Aylesford Sand Pit, Preston Hall collected by flake-tool (or TF) Bunting in the 1930s, held at Maidstone Museum

Monument Types

• FINDSPOT (Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic - 500000 BC to 40001 BC)

Associated Finds

• HANDAXE (Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic - 500000 BC to 40001 BC)
• HANDAXE (Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic - 500000 BC to 40001 BC)

Full description

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Several Palaeolithic handaxes held at Maidstone Museum came from pits near Preston Hall, Aylesford, on the southwest side of the main Medway river, documented by Roe (1), and then examined in 2005 for the Medway Valley Palaeolithic Project. One (a cleaver from the collection of TF Bunting and recovered in the 1930s) is marked as from "Aylesford Sand Pit, Preston Hall" and the other (a sub-cordate from the same collection, and similarly unstained) is unmarked, but was recovered at roughly the same time, being accessioned in 1935 (2). The location of this specific pit has been estimated as being the most-likely pit in the area that is not one of the other two better-defined nearby pits, namely the Preston Hall Ragstone Quarry or the Preston Hall Gravel Pit [see separate HER entries for these sites]

<1> Roe, D.A., 1968, Gazetteer of British Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Sites, p138 (Monograph). SWX6570.

<2> Wenban-Smith F. F., Bates M.R and Marshall G., 2007, Medway Valley Palaeolithic Project Final Report: The Palaeolithic Resource in the Medway Gravels (Kent) (Unpublished document). SKE29351.

Sources and further reading