Easton Bavents - Southwold's disappearing
pre-history

Easton Ness was originally a promontary forming the northern boundary of Sole Bay. Flint adzes, harpoon heads, needles and awls have been found suggesting that it was settled even in Stone Age times. Flint tools have been discovered which are reliably estimated to be at least a million years' old. We know that the area was also continuously occupied throughout the Neolithic, early Bronze and probably early Iron Ages.

In modern times the North Warren area was used as pasture until the late 1960s when it was ploughed for the first time. Four hundred or more prehistoric implements were turned up at this time - arrow heads, axe heads and awls and also tools made of bone and pieces of pottery attributed to the so-called 'Beaker People', immigrants from Europe 3000 years ago. The most important find was the well preserved femur (thigh bone) of an early man as well as a host of mammal bones - elephant, deer, horse, walrus and rhinocerous.

In the ancient river bed which once lay between the North and South Cliffs, were found the preserved hoof prints of an extinct beast thought to be an auroch, probably formed 4000 years ago.This whole area has now been lost to the sea.The South Cliff area has given up many medieval pottery vessels which are preserved in the museum. Pieces of masonry from St Nicholas Church, lost in the seventeenth century are often washed up by storms and hammered silver coins are regularly picked up in the fields during ploughing.