Flinty gaze
|September 15, 2018|
Not all of us know what “flint” is. A flint, sure—that’s the thing you make a spark off in an old Zippo, or in Scouts, or that you can splinter down (knapping) to make a sharp arrow- or spear-head.
But—a flint house?
Growing in a chalk hillside?
In layers?
And as the “sand” (or rather, shingle) on a beach?
Flint. Live in it, stab your prey with it, start your dinner fire with it.
Posted in Travel
wonderful! those of us living in Missouri know about flint, but i am not sure i have seen a flint house before!
Oh my, what a title for a book!
Looks like a lovely Sussex House to me. Those flinty walls and hot days form as some of my very earliest memories.
I knew what flint was, or possibly chert, from finding the leftovers where the local Native Americans had done their tool-making; flint where I live had to be brought in from some distance, over trade networks. A house constructed of flint nodules I mainly encountered from reading, first from Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, then from Terry Pratchett’s books about Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching and living on the Chalk. If geology is your bag, learning about flint and chalk and chert and how they are formed is fascinating.