Redhill lies on Abbey Heath, on the Norfolk bank of the Little Ouse about 1km NW of Thetford, where a series of disused gravel pits sit in a north–south alignment along the front edge of the third terrace at ~17m above Ordnance Datum. The site was discovered by Prigg (1869), who described a sequence ~5.5m in depth comprising 2m of coarse chalky flint gravel at the base, which was overlain by 2m of finer sub-angular gravel and 2m of yellow sand. This agrees with the recent section described by Davis et al. (2024), which revealed Chalk at a depth of 5.8m beneath the surface, overlain by 1.6m of coarse chalk-rich flint gravel, and a ~4m series of interbedded sand and gravel facies.

Recent mapping by Davis et al. has established Redhill as the stratotype for the Redhill Terrace of the Little Ouse, upon which the nearby localities of Broomhill, Barnham Heath, and Warren Wood North also sit. Seven electron spin resonance dates were obtained from this terrace producing age estimates of 374±47 ka (Warren Wood North), 353±41 ka, 335±13 ka, and 271±58 ka (Barnham Heath sections 3 & 4), suggesting aggradation during the MIS 10–9–8 climatic cycle. The sample from Redhill Section 1 produced Anglian and pre-Anglian age estimates of 468±37ka (Al) and 501±36 ka (Ti-Li). The regional stratigraphical relationship of the Little Ouse terrace staircase, all lying above Anglian till deposits, clearly shows this date to be an over-estimate, with the Ti-Li centre producing an overdispersion of points on the growth curve indicative of a mixture of well-bleached, partially bleached, and unbleached grains, indicating older reworked sediments. 

Artefacts were concentrated in the basal deposits, although Evans (1872) stresses that they also occurred throughout the sands and gravels. Several hundred were recovered, most of them dispersed into private collections (Evans 1872) . The database sample consists of 31 handaxes in the British Museum marked as coming from Redhill, all originally collected by Henry Christie and the Blackmore Museum (Salisbury) during the first flush of finds (Evans 1872, 495). Given that no other terrace deposits overlap the Redhill Terrace at this site and the artefacts are mostly in fresh condition, they can be firmly attributed to the period MIS 10–9.

Davis, R., Lewis, S.G., Hatch, M., Ashton, N., Voinchet, P., Bahain, J.J., Dale, L., Foulds, F., Rawlinson, A. & White, M. 2024. A revised terrace stratigraphy and chronology for the Little Ouse River as a framework for interpreting the late Lower and early Middle Palaeolithic of central East Anglia, UK. Quaternary Environments and Humans 2: 100045.

Evans, J. 1872. Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain. First Edition. London: Longmans & Co.

Prigg, H. 1869.The discovery of associated works of man, and the remains of the Elephant, etc., in the gravel near Thetford. The Quarterly Journal of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History 1: 3–5.