Cozen’s Pit (also known as St Stephen’s Pit and Forty Acres Pit) was a large gravel and brickearth quarry located the north bank of the River Stour, operational through the 1920s (Knowles 2023). Dewey and Smith (1925) investigated the site as part of their Stour Valley work, recording a 4–5m thick bed of coarse reddish gravel, locally current bedded, on top of blue (London) clay. This was capped by a reddish-yellow loam (the brickearth) up to 2m in thickness.

The pit is now concealed under the Forty Acres housing estate, but it once scarred the south-facing slope of the Stour valley (which rises up to the Blean Plateau at 75m above Ordnance Datum) and appears on historical maps between the 20 and 25m contours. Coleman (1952) identified a staircase of Stour terraces across the Blean, mapping an eastward migration of the Stour before it cut down into the present river valley, with significant terraces at 45–40m (Fordwich), 30m (Reculver), 25–20m (Reculver, Sturry) and 10–5m OD (Chislet, Reculver). Recent geoarchaeological investigations, lithostratographical and biostratigraphical correlations in the Stour Valley (Knowles 2023; Bridgland et al. 1998) strongly support an MIS 10–9–8 attribution for the 25–20m terrace.

A collection of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts (n = 108) from Canterbury West was amassed by local amateur Dr Tom Armstrong Bowes between 1923 and 1928 (Knowles 2023). These were all purchased from a Canterbury fossil and antiquity dealer, Valentine Sinclair, who had a special relationship with both the local quarrymen and Bowes, receiving and giving preferential treatment on palaeoliths found in the local quarries. Contemporary reports suggest that artefacts came from both the gravel and the base of the brickearth. Bowes’s archive in the Herne Bay Seaside Museum, including correspondence between Bowes and Sinclair enabled Knowles (2023) to reconstruct a cogent assemblage of handaxes in the pit. They are presently housed in the British Museum and Herne Bay Seaside Museum.

Bridgland, D.R., Keen, D.H., Schreve, D.C., & White, M.J. 1998. Summary dating and correlation of the Stour sequence. In: Murton, J.B. et al. (eds) The Quaternary of Kent & Sussex: Field Guide. London: Quaternary Research Association, p. 53–54.

Coleman, A. 1952. Some aspects of the development of the Lower Stour, Kent. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 63: 63–86.

Dewey, H. & Smith, R.A. 1925. Flints from the Sturry Gravels, Kent. Archaeologia 74: 117–136.

Knowles, P.G. 2023. A magnificent ficron and assemblage containing cleavers from Canterbury: a reanalysis of the collection of Dr Thomas Armstrong Bowes and a problem of provenance. Lithics 41: 5–28.