The site referred to as Baker’s Farm, located on the left bank of the Thames 1km north of Farnham Royal, consisted of three casually worked adjacent pits exploiting sands and gravels of the Lynch Hill Terrace (Lacaille 1940; Cranshaw 1983). They have all since been built over.

At Chennel’s Pit a 5m section revealed 3m of poorly-sorted but well-stratified gravel with bands of sand and clay resting horizontally on top of Reading Beds, and overlain by a white, clayey solifluction gravel and brickearth (Lacaille 1940). In the pit ~68m to the northwest, an evenly-bedded gravel resting on resorted cross-bedded gravel was reported from the same levels. Sections by Breuil (1934) provide a more detailed description of the deposits, including seven gravel units, but apart from claims for additional solifluction deposits (quite typical of Breuil) his observations largely agreed with Lacaille’s (Cranshaw 1983). The deposits are firmly correlated with MIS 10–9–8.

Artefacts were collected by Treacher and Lacaille during the 1920s and 1930s, with material coming from throughout the gravel but most abundant in the lowest and coarsest 1.2m, as at Furze Platt which they strongly resemble. Over 400 handaxes are known to come from Baker’s Farm, 395 of which have been scanned as part of the Digital Technologies, Acheulean Handaxes project. They occur in a variety of preservation states, from fresh to heavily abraded, Wymer (1968) noting that the most abraded tended to be ovates and cordates, which probably belonged to an older derived industry to the main group. The present sample consists of a small selection of 30 fresh handaxes collected in the 1930s by A.D. Lacaille, the reasons for ignoring the must larger Treacher collection being the same collector issues described at Furze Platt.

Breuil, H. 1934. De l’importance de la solifluction dans l’étude des terrains quaternaires de la France et des pay voisins. Revue de Géographie Physique et de Géologie Dynamique 7: 269–331.

Cranshaw, S. 1983. Handaxes and Cleavers: Selected English Acheulean Industries. BAR British Series 113. Oxfords: Archaeopress.

Lacaille, A.D. 1940. The Palaeoliths from the gravels of the Lower Boyn Hill Terrace around Maidenhead. Antiquaries Journal 20: 245–271.

Wymer, J. 1968. Lower Palaeolithic Archaeology in Britain as Represented by the Thames Valley. London: John Baker.