Hoxne Brick Pit facts for kids
| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
A house built on the site
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| Area of Search | Suffolk |
|---|---|
| Interest | Geological |
| Area | 1.3 hectares |
| Notification | 1990 |
| Location map | Magic Map |
The Hoxne Brick Pit is a special natural area in Hoxne, Suffolk, England. It covers about 1.3 hectares, which is like two football fields. This site is important for understanding Earth's history. It is known as a Site of Special Scientific Interest because of its unique geology.
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Discovering Ancient History at Hoxne
This site is famous for two big reasons. It helped scientists learn about early humans and past climates.
John Frere's Amazing Discovery
In 1797, a man named John Frere made an incredible find here. He dug down about twelve feet and found flint hand axes. These tools are now known to be very old, about 400,000 years old!
Frere realized these tools were from a time long, long ago. He wrote that they were from "a very remote period indeed." This was a huge idea at the time. It was one of the first times anyone understood that humans had lived on Earth for such a long time. This was over 60 years before this idea became widely accepted. One of Frere's hand axes, which was likely a general cutting tool, is now kept in the British Museum.
The Hoxnian Stage: A Warm Period in the Ice Age
The Hoxne Brick Pit is also important for understanding Earth's climate history. It gives us clues about a warm period called the Hoxnian Stage. This stage happened during the last Ice Age. It was a time when the Earth warmed up between two very cold periods.
The Hoxnian Stage lasted from about 474,000 to 374,000 years ago. Scientists named this warm period after the Hoxne site because the best evidence for it was found here. Studying the layers of soil and rocks at Hoxne helps scientists learn about how Earth's climate has changed over hundreds of thousands of years.
What is Hoxne Brick Pit Like Today?
Today, the Hoxne Brick Pit is on private land. This means people cannot visit it. The original pit has been filled in. There is even a house built on part of the site now. Even though it's no longer an open pit, its history remains very important to science.
