M25 Big Pickle



Post to the east Bletchingley North Park
Post to the west Whitehill

Big Pickle
This is marked on maps and appears to be associated with an earthwork.

Sand Pits. Silica Sand Pit which has been worked since 1993.  The sand is takem by conveyer belt to ahopper on the east side of the lane by North Park Farm.  Lorries then take the sand to Merstham.

Mesolothic site. This is the unusual and nationally important discovery of pits, some in clusters with buried soil of only Mesolithic date. This is within a hollow of about 1ha.
there had been flint working at several locations, and also fires and/or cooking activities. Repeated visits were evidently paid to the area from around 8000BC to around 4300BC. Mesolithic people have left little trace on the landscape and these remains provide a remarkable contrast to what is usually found. They show a single site which was visited repeatedly over millennian and has a sequence and variety of evidence that is unique.

Little Pickle. On earlier maps a square earthwork is marked as Little Pickle. It seems to have been eradicated by the sand extraction and archaeological site A roughly square moat was in a copse. Foundations of a 16th wall were found south bank and also foundations of a building,.  It is thought that this was not a moat a 15th deer pound.
Fish-pond. This was found by archaeologists but was not thought to be  linked to the moat.
Mesolithic flint implements were also found here.

Green Lane.
A track running north/south and apparently accessing the sand extraction site. It passes under the motorway as a trackway.

Roughets Lane
Lane through woodland with a number of posh houses on it

Sources
Archaeology database. Web site
Bletchingley Extensive Urban Study. Web site

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