Flint Knapping Training Days

To promote and foster traditional flint-working skills, six workshops were led by expert John Lord were held during October and November 2014. At each workshop, John took the four participants from the earliest Paleolithic hand tools via the Neolithic Breckland flint mines to dressed building stone and then the gun-flints, demonstrating each technique and then encouraging everyone to try their hands at knapping and shaping the flints. Liz Taylor summed up the experience: This was a really 5-star day. John Lord is a magician with people as well as flint. All four of us felt the same, as if we’d been shown how to peel an orange except that we had a lump of flint and what came out at the end was something both useable & beautiful.