Blackpatch is an archaeological site in

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ...

, England, about west of the village of Findon and about north-west of

Worthing Worthing () is a seaside town in West Sussex, England, at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of Chichester. With a population of 111,400 and an area of , the borough is the second largest component of the Brighton and Ho ...

. It is the site of a

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...

flint mine, and

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

barrows. The site is a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

Description

Flint mine

The flint mine, which was levelled about 1950, is on the south-west slope of Blackpatch Hill. There are more than 64 infilled shafts, diameter up to . The shafts and other features at the site were investigated from 1922 to 1932 by

John Pull John Henry Pull (25 June 1899 – 10 November 1960) was an amateur archaeologist. After service as a soldier in World War I, where he learnt surveying skills, he worked as a gramophone salesman, a postman, and later a security guard, but always h ...

. Seven shafts were excavated. They were up to deep; from them, galleries extended up to , following a single seam of flint. Flint flakes and pottery sherds were found in the infills from the shafts. Around the shafts were working areas where mined flint was processed. An antler pick from a shaft has been

radiocarbon dated Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...

to about 3000 BC."Blackpatch, Findon, West Sussex"
''Sussex Past''. Sussex Archaeological Society. Retrieved 24 October 2020."Neolithic flint mines"

Bournemouth University Bournemouth University is a public university in Bournemouth, England, with its main campus situated in neighbouring Poole. The university was founded in 1992; however, the origins of its predecessor date back to the early 1900s. The univer ...

. Retrieved 25 October 2020. Pull later investigated the flint mines in West Sussex at Church Hill and at

Cissbury Cissbury Ring is an biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Worthing in West Sussex. It is owned by the National Trust and is designated a Scheduled monument for its Neolithic flint mine and Iron Age hillfort. Cissbury R ...

Barrows

The site, now levelled, contained more than 12 round barrows, dating from the

. Three of them were over infilled flint mine shafts, with others to the north-east.

References

{{reflist Scheduled monuments in West Sussex Prehistoric mines Bronze Age sites in West Sussex Worthing