This was quite interesting and definitely one of those spots I wouldn't necessarily have stumbled across unless I was doing the ABC tour.
Me—that is me, Lou, and Thomas—headed up to the cottage in Norfolk for the weekend. I’d chosen a few discrete "ABCs" to tick off along the way, and this one is located up through Thetford Forest. (Note to self: Thetford Forest looks like a great place for a cycle at some point, so that will be my cycle plan for Norfolk, I think).
The site is called Grimes Graves. It was first named by the Anglo-Saxons, meaning something like "the pit of the pagan god Grim”. It wasn’t until it was excavated relatively recently that we discovered what it really is: a whole series of flint quarries.
These date back to Neolithic times—according to the website, around 2650 BC. That is two and a half thousand years before Christ was even around, so it is quite old.
The site itself is an incredible sort of moonscape. You turn up in the middle of this forest and see these mounds all over several acres of the field. One of them has been excavated properly, so you can climb down into it. As a mine, it's not particularly visually arresting—it’s quite small—but as a concept, realizing this was dug out over 4,000 years ago, it is incredible.
Apparently, the families that did the digging used to live nearby in little encampments. They would dig down about 15 to 20 meters—which is considerable for that time—but for some reason, they didn't make it a big open-cast mine. They would dig a shaft, then move about 10 or 15 meters along, dig down again, and do the same thing. Hence why it is such a pocketed, moonscape-style landscape today.
It is English Heritage, so it cost quite a lot of money, but it made for a nice, interesting little stop midway on our journey up to Norfolk. I'm glad I did it. Thank you, Atlas Obscura.
The Map: