by Barbara Butler
The soil in Swilland and Witnesham is slowly permeable calcerous and non-calcerous clay, with slight risk of water erosion.
Down the valley in Witnesham, alongside the river, there is deep well drained sandy, often ferrigenous soil which risks wind as well as water erosion. The water meadows have a fertile layer of topsoil.(Goult).
Local children, wading along the banks of the River Fynn, find fossils telling of an early life here; Sponge fossils and Echinoids (sea urchins) well worn by water action, probably local, are from the Upper Cretaceous period: c. 65-100 million years old.
Researchers have found that early humans arrived in Britain 700,000 years ago, driven out by repeated glaciations but returning when the land warmed up. However between 180,000 and 60,000 years ago they vanished completely.
From an advanced sonar survey of the bed of the Channel, scientists at the Imperial College in London have estimated that a catastrophic flood separated Britain from the continent of Europe 200,000 years ago. In the scenario envisaged by Stringer and Gupta, there was a high chalk ridge linking Britain and France running roughly between Dover and Calais. Northeast of the ridge the land sloped down to the North Sea. During one of Europe’s glaciations an ice cap up to a mile thick reached from Scotland to Denmark, effectively damming the North Sea. This turned into a fresh water lake, which, fed by rivers, deepened over thousands of years, and was hundreds of feet above sea level. One day it just overflowed the top of the chalk ridge. Once the torrent had started it would have ripped through the sol chalk and poured down towards the Atlantic.
This giant river could be the answer to why the Neanderthal peoples could not return, despite a temperate, favorable climate.
A Neolithic axe head found in Witnesham, recorded by Suffolk Archeology Unit could be as much as 6,000 years old. Stone-age settlers found flints here, with which to strike the spark that made their fire. They made tools too; since before record the centre of the flint industry in East Anglia has been located in or around Brandon on the Norfolk/Suffolk Border, only three miles from Grimes Graves, the ‘Sheffield’ of four thousand years ago. Our pre-historic forbears could knap tools for side scrapers, hammer stones or mauls, used for crushing grain, flint sickles and saws, spatulate knives, hatchets with recessed platforms, hafting implements, choppers, spearheads and slender, richly segmented and highly polished axe heads. Flint can be given a deadly cutting power. A sliver can have a razor’s edge.
If there was hemp growing along the river banks they could have used it for clothes, ropes even an early form of paper. If they made paper, what did they use it for? Did they have a simple way of passing messages? The search for answers, an insatiable curiosity drives archeologists ever onward.
In 1949 Basil Brown excavated two sandpits on land opposite Sandy Lane, owned by Mrs. Addison. He identified 82 pieces of Belgic Iron Age pottery from 800 BC to 42 AD. There were traces of two hut sites with fire holes and animal bones.
The site is listed as a National Monument.
These were probably the first settlers in our valley. Two families living close together to take care of each other. They were Celtic people who had come to Britain around 600BC from central Europe, deeply mysterious, very closely connected to the earth, the forests, rivers and animals around them. The best known Celtic warrior in East Anglia is Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni tribe. She was the wife of a client king, that is, ruling with the permission of the Romans. She would have eaten Mediterranean food, wore sophisticated garments similar to the Romans, and was never without gold ornamentation. Two gold torques found in Ipswich testifies, with other finds, to the fact that our Iron Age ancestors were well connected, up to the minute and with a great deal of influence. Were our settler families related to each other? Were there other families close by that we do not know about? How did they live? The two Iceni coins found here indicate that the Witnesham settlers were members of that tribe. Did they hide quietly here, where there were few Romans? The Boudiccan revolt started in Colchester, the then capital of Roman Britain then went on to raze Londinium, the tax collecting centre of Roman Britain. Following the Iceni defeat in Wessex the Romans sought to ethnically cleanse Britain of Celtic civilization. They remain today in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, those far corner of Britain the Romans could not tame.
The old boys in the pub used to say that in the 1930’s there was enough water in the Fynn to sustain fishing. Often trout were pulled from the river. When the houses in the main road were built the natural springs which used to feed the river were diverted to the sewers; they now by-pass the Fynn joining the river further downstream, nearer to the sea. Consequently the water level has dropped dramatically; in places it is just one or two centimeters deep. Occasionally, when rain is particularly heavy, it will still flood for a day or two across the water meadows along the banks of our pretty river.
Our Iron Age families may have come up the banks of the wider river from the sea for the winter to find a haven on its banks. Seashores offered a wealth of food and medicine. Here in our valley, safe against the winter storms that pound the shores of the North Sea, they could fish, find berries, roots and nuts and hunt the wild animals that lived in our forests. They could not read or write. They rarely buried their dead. They did not leave pictures; if they painted at all, it would have been on their bodies. They were simple people, leaving no shrine or burial, which are the beginnings of the structure and hierarchy that men invent to create order out of chaos. But they whisper to us across the centuries, telling us they were here before us, telling us we have stewardship of this place for a short time only.
Local finds:
1. Two Echinoids (sea urchins) one complete but well worn by water action, the other only a fragment. Found in River Fynn at Witnesham 2003. Probably local. Upper Cretaceous period: c. 65-100 million years old.
2. Four sponge fossils. All from the chalk. Probably local. Upper Cretaceous period: c.65-100 million years old.
Suffolk Archeological Units - recorded finds:
1. Axe - Neolithic - 4000 BC? to 2351 BC? Front half of a narrow axe, probably from Witnesham.. Circa 4.5ins long by 2.5ins (S2),
2. Belgic/IA pottery from two hut sites with fire holes and animal bones
3. Coin, Gold quarter stater of Trinovantian type attributed to Addedomarus Late Iron Age - 100 BC to 42 AD
4. Silver Iceni "Bury Tribe" type A coin - 100 BC to 42 AD
5. Iceni Face-Horse B type coin from TM 1810 5355 (S3).
6. Bronze Harness, Late Iron Age - 100 BC to 42 AD
“Homo Britannicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life In Britain” by Professor Chris Stringer, head of human origins: Natural History Museum, London, and colleague Sanjeev Gupta.