Flint mine and a bowl barrow on Church Hill, 400m south west of Findon Place

Church Hill stands on the South Downs near Findon village, about five kilometres north-west of Worthing in West Sussex. It is an archaeological site from the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, protected as a scheduled monument. The hilltop offers wide views across the rolling chalk downland. Two main features mark the site: a group of flint mine shafts and a bowl barrow. Modern farming has levelled much of the ground, but traces remain visible from the air. The flint mine contains about thirty-six infilled shafts dug between 3000 and 1500 BCE. John Pull excavated six shafts between 1932 and 1949, finding galleries up to two metres deep that followed flint seams. Pottery fragments from the Late Neolithic and Early to Middle Bronze Age were found at the bottom of the shafts. A beaker with a cremation and two flint axes was later discovered in one shaft, showing the site was still in use during the Beaker period. Nearby flint mines at Blackpatch, Cissbury and Harrow Hill were also investigated by Pull. A bowl barrow once stood in the south-east of the area, about fifteen and a half metres wide. Ploughing has flattened the mound, but part of it still covers an old mine shaft. The barrow and mine together show how people mined flint and buried their dead on the same hilltop over thousands of years. Visitors can walk the gentle slopes and see the low earthworks that hint at the site’s long past.