Manual Ref* SUmsHX005 Show image 655
Title*

Hoxne Man (Hearts of Oak Sculpture Trail)
County Suffolk   District Council Mid Suffolk 
Civil Parish or equivalent Hoxne  Town/Village* Hoxne 
Road Wittons Lane 
Precise Location Upper path of Brakey Wood 
OS Grid Ref TM187770  Postcode IP21 
Previous location(s)  
Setting New plantation established by the Woodland Trust occupying 15.8 acres to the east of the village  Access Public 
Artist/Maker Role Qualifier
Ben Platt-Mills  Carver(s)   

Commissioned by

 Mid Suffolk District Council 

Design & Constrn period

  

Date of installing

 2003 

Exact date of unveiling

  

Category
Abstract Animal Architectural
Commercial Commemorative Composite
Free Functional Funerary
Heraldic Military Natural
Non-Commemorative Performance Portable
Religious Roadside, Wayside Sculptural
Temporary, Mobile Other  

Object Type
Building Clock Tower Architectural
Coat of Arms Cross Fountain
Landscape Marker Medallion
Mural Panel Readymade
Relief Shaft Sculpture
Statue Street Furniture War Memorial
Other Object Sub Type: Wood carving

Subject Type
Allegorical Mythological Pictorial
Figurative Non-figurative Portrait
Still-life Symbolic Other

Subject Sub Type
Bust Equestrian Full-length
Group Head Reclining
Seated Standing Torso
Part Material Dimension
Figure  Oak with embedded flint  H 245 cm x Dia 90 cm 

Work is
Extant Not Sited Lost

Owner/Custodian

 Mid Suffolk District Council and Suffolk County Council 

Listing status
Grade I Grade II* Grade II Don't Know Not Listed

Surface Condition
Corrosion, Deterioration Accretions
Bird Guano Abrasions, cracks, splits
Biological growth Spalling, crumbling
Metallic staining Previous treatments
Other  
Detail:

Structural Condition
Armature exposed Broken or missing parts
Replaced parts Loose elements
Cracks, splits, breaks, holes Spalling, crumbling
Water collection Other
Detail:

Vandalism
Graffiti Structural damage Surface Damage
Detail:

Overall condition
Good Fair Poor

Risk
No Known Risk At Risk Immediate
Signatures/Marks  
Inscriptions  

Description (physical)

 Larger than life-size crouching figure holding aloft in his right hand a large knapped flint, with a short wooden spear held between his knees. Commissioned from Hearts of Oak to commemorate Hoxne’s Paleolithic past together with Big head (see under Eye). 

Description (iconographical)

 In June 1797, John Frere (1740–1807) a local land owner and member of both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society, watched a workman digging clay for bricks in a pit at Hoxne. Frere recognised the regularly shaped triangular flints had been dug up, now call hand axes, as man-made tools - against the prevailing view that they were the result of thunderbolts or meteorites. The flints had come from a layer of gravel 12 feet below the surface, underneath layers of sand and brick-earth, which Frere correctly interpreted as riverine. Later that month he wrote to the Society of Antiquaries arguing that the flints were “weapons of war, fabricated by a people who had not the use of metals” and that “the situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period indeed: even beyond that of the present world.” The letter was published in Archaeologia 13 in 1800, but with no response. This came in 1859 following the discovery of similar hand axes at Abbeville in northern France, also found at about eleven feet beneath ground. On his return to London the archaeologist John Evans, who had visited Abbeville, was amazed to find the comparable axe heads which Frere had sent to the Society of Antiquaries. After reading Frere’s article Evans, together with the geologist Joseph Prestwick, visited the Hoxne brick pit, confirming Frere’s views in a paper to the Royal Society on the 26th May 1859. The Hoxne brick pit, overgrown and long since worked-out, can still be seen to the south of Hoxne, on the east side of the road to Eye.  

Photographs

 Date taken:  23/3/2007
Date logged:  26/3/2007

Photographed by:
David Hulks

On Site Inspection

 Date:  23/3/2007

Inspected by:
David Hulks

Sources and References

 www.treesculpture.co.uk accessed 29-Jun-07 / www.onesuffolk.co.uk/HoxnePC accessed 29-Jun-07; www.Hoxne/history/prehistory, developed by fotoflow.co.uk accessed 27/09/2011 

Database

 Date entered:  29/6/2007

Data inputter:
David Hulks & Richard Cocke