NHER 59573 (Find Spot record) - Palaeolithic handaxe, Waterworks Pit, Mundford Road

c. 1920. Stray Find.
The Thetford Museum hold a small ovate handaxe that is recorded as having been found at the Mundford Road Waterworks Pit in around 1920 (THEHM : 1979.64).

This object was almost certainly found in the large former clay pit that lay immediately to the south of what was once the Thetford Corporation Waterworks (NHER 51693). This pit is clearly marked on the 1st Edition O.S map and was still open when aerial photographs were taken of this area in the 1940s. It is likely that this is the pit that J. J. Wymer mistakenly identified as the Red Hill site in (S1).

A retouched flake of possible Palaeolithic date that is held by the Thetford Museum and recorded as being found on Mundford Road in the 1930s (THEHM : 1979.100.4; NHER 59574) may also have come from this site. This pit may have also been the source of 3 handaxes in the Thetford Museum that are recorded as being found in the Thetford area during the 1920s (THEHM : 1977.162.1-3). See NHER 5798 for further information on these and other unprovenanced Palaeolithic objects from Thetford.

P. Watkins (HES), 27 June 2013.