Yabadabadoo! - The Hampshire Flintstones

About 10,000 years ago the ancient people of Hampshire (the county where we live) discovered that in the soil all around them was a very useful resource.  This was the flint:

This hard stone proved to have many uses.  One of the first things they discovered was that rubbing them together could cause a spark which could be used to start fires.

The stones could also be “napped” or split to make tools and weapons. Here are some examples:

They also found that these stones could be very useful as a hard wearing building material.

Even today houses and walls in  in Hampshire can be seen incorporating the use of flints as an attractive feature.  On a recent bike trip The head photographer took some shots of newly built houses which have this feature:

I hesitate to say that those of us living in Hampshire are still living like cavemen but we still occasionally dig up small flints in our garden but most have been removed now.  And we have an electronic candle lighter for our romantic evenings on the sofa.

As in write we are preparing to go to the garden centre to buy pansies (flowers not people!) to give the garden a bit of winter colour. I’ll write a bit more about that later.

More soon...