Flint Implements from the “Stone Bed” of the North Norfolk Coast

Abstract

The sub-crag “stone bed” has been described by many writers and there is now a general consensus of opinion that it represents the non-floatable débris of the Tertiary land surface spread out by the advancing Crag sea and sealed in beneath the sands, clays and gravels of the shelly crag. In Norfolk the stone bed rests immediately upon the chalk. At the present time, when most of the formerly numerous chalk pits are no longer worked, sections are scarce. The best available opportunities for examining the stone bed are provided by the cliff section from Weybourne to Sheringham, and the beach and foreshore exposures from Beeston to East Runton.At Weybourne, to the east of the old coast-guard cottages, the chalk rises abruptly from beneath the chalky boulder-clay of the Great Eastern glaciation which cuts down below tide-level to the westward; and soon attains a height of about twenty feet above the pebble-bank. For the first few hundred yards the chalk is very disturbed, flints from the stone bed, patches of very shelly crag and fragments of chalk being inextricably mixed in the upper portion, though the chalk four feet below the surface shows the flint layers apparently undisturbed. In about three hundred yards the stone bed becomes continuous, with varying thicknesses of the crag gravels and sands separating it from the glacial beds above. In thickness the stone bed varies from six to nine inches, occasionally reaching a foot, and tending to become rather thicker as it stretches eastward.