There are many beautiful flint buildings that still exist in medieval Norwich such as The Guild Hall, The Bridewell Museum, St Andrews hall and Suckling House ( now Cinema City). These buildings are renowned for their fine craftsmanship especially the Bridewell and is quoted to have the finest flint wall in England. It is unclear where the flint came from for these walls, however Norfolk has an abundant source of flint and is still mined at Norfolk Gravel near Sheringham as whole stones.
4500 years ago the Neolithic people where mining flint from chalk 57ft below ground at Grimes Graves in Suffolk near Thetford. This site now run by the National trust and was one of Europes earliest industrial centres for flint. An unusual thing about this site is the fact that no graves have been found near here even though there must have been a fair few people working there . The sites name comes from the
god Grim, meaning people who do evil things and graves that actually means pit or mines, hence evil mines or Grimes Graves.
Flint is a hard black mineral similar to glass, which when worked correctly is capable of a very sharp cutting edge. It is found naturally in chalk and is made from almost pure silica which is the second most abundant mineral on earth second to oxygen. It is found in sand and soil commonly found in natural as a microcrystalline quartz. It is formed by the layering of organisms that contain silica in their bones over millions of years.
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