Find Spot record MDO20259 - Carved bone, Blackberry Lane/Quarr Lane, Sherborne

In October 1911 two boys from Sherborne School produced an engraved bone containing the image of a horse similar to the palaeolithic image of a horse from Cresswell Crags. The boys claim to have found it amongst a pile of rocks in a quarry half a mile to the north of Sherborne. It is variously claimed as a forgery and as a genuine piece of palaolithic portable art.

ST 6350 1750. Carved bone findspot sited from Auth 2 and OS 10000 1983).
A fragment of horse-bone was found by two schoolboys in a quarry West of Sherborne in October 1911. It is inscribed with a horse's head which strongly resembles that known from Cresswell Crags, Derbyshire. Accepted as a genuine Palaeolithic carving by Woodward in 1814 (1), this was disputed by Sollas in 1924 (2). Oakley (4) has demonstrated that the bone has been mineralised, but there is no firm conclusion as to when the carving actually took place. (5)

If the bone is genuine it was discovered in a part of a quarry in the Blackberry Lane/ Quarr Lane area of Sherborne which may have contained a fissure which later opened out into a narrow cavern. It is thought that the bone may have come from this cavern and that a possible opening to it may have been accesible from a dry valley adjacent to Nether Coombe during the palaeolithic period [4].

<1> Woodward, A S, 1914, On an apparently palaeolithic engraving on a bone from Sherborne (Dorset), 100-2 (Article in serial). SDO10575.

<2> Sollas, W J, 1924, Ancient Hunters (3rd edition), 536n (Monograph). SDO10574.

<3> Woodward, A S, 1926, The palaeolithic drawing of a horse form Sherborne; Nature (Article in serial). SDO10576.

<4> Farrar, R A H, 1979, The Sherborne Controversy; Antiquity, 211-215 (Article in serial). SDO10573.

<5> Farrar, R A H, 1981, The Sherbone Bone Again; Antiquity, 44-6 (Article in serial). SDO10577.

<6> National Record of the Historic Environment, 887617 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Nov 7 2024 11:28AM