The Hitchin Lake Beds are located on the southern side of Hitchin town, within a breach in the chalk downs of the Chilterns known as the Hitchin Gap, through which runs the River Hiz. Artefacts were first identified in 1877, prompting a trial pit by Evans and Prestwich (Reid 1898), although it was decades before descriptions of the interglacial deposits and artefacts were published (Hill 1891, 1908; Evans 1897; Reid 1898). The site represents a series of stream-fed lacustrine silts and clays filling a basin-like depression (kettle-hole) in MIS 12 till and outwash gravel, lying between 85m and 110m above Ordnance Datum (Boreham & Gibbard 1995; Hopson et al. 1996) . The lake later fragmented into a series of shallow pools, in which a shelly freshwater ‘Chara’ marl accumulated (Reid 1901). The lake deposits are overlain by a variable thickness of ‘brickearth’, poorly stratified silts laid down by colluvial and aeolian processes, possibly under cool conditions. These brickearths also fill vertical pipes that penetrate the underlying horizontal beds. Plant remains from lacustrine deposits included a range of temperate aquatic, marshland and grassland species, as well as oak leaves showing the presence of adjacent wooded landscapes (Boreham & Gibbard 1995). Molluscs, ostracods and fish from the Chara marl are indicative of temperate freshwater pools or lakes with still or very slowly-flowing water conditions (Reid 1898). Pollen from the Lake Beds and Chara marl revealed an interglacial sequence attributed to Hoxnian substages Ho I to Ho IIc (Boreham & Gibbard 1995), with the evidence for a reduced water table at Hitchin (i.e. fragmentation into pools) with similar phenomena across East Anglia, all of which appear to span HoII–III. Both the palynological and hydrological sequence suggest that Hitchin spans a substantial length of the Hoxnian sensu stricto, MIS 11c. The small mammalian assemblage from the Lake Beds are consistent with this correlation (Schreve 1997).

Palaeolithic implements are known from various locations stretching from Windmill Hill in the north to Maydencroft Farm in the south, over a distance of about a mile. The majority, however, were recovered from two locations—Ransom’s Brickyard and Jeeves’s Pit—which lay at opposite ends of the Folly Path in the Highbury region of Hitchin. Topographically they probably represent the right bank and east bank of the Pleistocene lake. Artefacts were reported from at least two contexts: in the Chara marl and in a stony layer at the base of the brickearth (Reid 1898).

Some artefacts may also have come from the Lake Beds (Reid 1898). Roe attributed Hitchin to Group II, sub-group B. It is unfortunate that none of the Hitchin handaxes used by Roe can be directly attributed to a particular stratum, and it has been suggested that Hitchin actually contains two separate assemblages that have been conflated, one dominated by pointed handaxes similar to the Middle Gravel at Swanscombe, and another containing a high proportion of ovate handaxes with twists edges (Wymer in Hopson et al. 1996; White et al. 2019; Shipton & White 2020).

Boreham, S. & Gibbard, P.L. 1995. Middle Pleistocene Hoxnian Stage interglacial deposits at Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association 106: 259–270.

Evans, S.J. 1897. Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain. Second Edition. London: Longmans & Co.

Hill, W. 1891. Our forgotten lake. Journal of the Hitchin Natural History Club 12: 93–97.

Hill, W. 1908. On a deep channel of Drift at Hitchin (Hertfordshire). Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 64: 8–24.

Hopson, P.M., Aldiss, D.T. & Smith, A. 1996. Geology of the country around Hitchin. Geological Memoir 221. London: H.M. Stationery Office.

Reid, C. 1898. The Palaeolithic deposits at Hitchin and their relation to the Glacial Epoch. Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society and Field Club 10: 14–22.

Reid, C. 1901. A further note on the Palaeolithic deposits at Hitchin. Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society and Field Club 12: 63–64.

Schreve, D.C. 1997. Mammalian biostratigraphy of the later Middle Pleistocene in Britain. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of London.

Shipton, C. & White, M.J. 2020. Handaxe types, colonization waves, and social norms in the British Acheulean. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 31: 102352.

White, M., Ashton, N. & Bridgland, D. 2019. Twisted handaxes in Middle Pleistocene Britain and the implications for regional-scale cultural variation and the deep history of Acheulean hominin groups. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 85: 61–81.