Kent Flints

This is a gallery dedicated to the unexpected magic of the humble beach pebble. These are no rare and hyper-complex agates, but does that mean we should just pass them over? I think not and I hope this gallery bears me out there. I believe that beauty has no connection to rarity or the elite collectors market! For a while now, I have been picking these up on various beaches around where I live in Kent and have managed to polish a few. Things were hampered by the fact that I had no saw to cut them with, but that has now changed, so this gallery will hopefully start expanding.

Classifying these is massively problematic for two reasons. One is that the sea and the Thames obviously do a lot of moving around, but the other reason is that there has undoubtedly been considerable man-made interference as well with imported/dredged material for sea defenses. As an example, in Lydd the pale flints were joined by a type of black flint - almost bluish when waterworn. These looked more out of place - man-made banks. So maybe the pale form is is the original english channel material? Conversely, on Whitstable beach, which I know to have been built up many years ago with a huge import of gravel, these paler forms predominate. And finally Samphire Hoe was the dumping ground for Channel Tunnel material, which gives yet another intriguing possibility. A Channel Tunnel geode?

At the very least though, one can observe a distinct change taking place as you move round the Kent coast, with the red flints confined to the north, mostly from a small area on Sheppy and quickly being supplanted by a paler form. The stones below are arranged 'clockwise' round the coast of Kent.