Landscape_Mini

PINK AND YELLOW roses scramble over the
bumpy, textured walls of a row of flint cottages in
Burnham Market, Norfolk. With egg shapes and
amorphous circles of blue-black, tawny brown, milky
grey and flecked rust, the protruding flints contrast with neat
flat-brick lintels around the windows and doorways, and the
evenly scalloped edges of warm terracotta clay roof tiles.
Fronted by a misty purple lavender hedge and tall hollyhocks
nodding in the summer breeze, these highly distinctive
cottages have not changed significantly since they were built
in the 17th and 18th centuries. “England has perhaps no
more curious material than flint: a stone of obscure origin,
quite unlike any other in colour and texture, and not used for
building in any other country on so extensive a scale,” writes
Alec Clifton-Taylor in The Pattern of English Building.
Flint is one of the most common, naturally occurring
stones in southern Britain. It is a type of quartz, or crystalline
silica, with a cryptocrystalline structure, which means the
crystals are so tiny that they are difficult to see, even when
viewed under a microscope.
Traditional flintwork can add shine,
colour and a rugged appeal to
buildings and ornamental features,
and is a skilled craft that has
endured through the centuries
Early uses
Flint was used by prehistoric man, initially for rudimentary
tools and weapons, and there is a 93-acre, 5,000-year-old flint
mine at Grime’s Graves in Norfolk as evidence of its early
importance. The Romans spotted its durable properties and
used it to strengthen the walls of their forts, such as
Anderida, on the site of Pevensey Castle in East Sussex. The
availability and resilience of flint meant that it continued to
be popular in the Middle Ages, when brickmaking was
uncommon, and other stone was hard to find or difficult to ❯
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