Axed from the book.

 

My search for the final few references for the project nears the end with only about 20 to get. One of the most unusual is of the Stone axe in the Pike 0' Stickle chapter of the Central fells. I had deducted that AW had used one of the axes in the collection of Mr R Plint of Kendal which were in the care of Kendal Museum. After all, AW was a volunteer curator at about the same time and he would have had access to the complete collection. His details of it were very accurate so all I had to do was go and look though the archives and find the right axe. Sadly not as easy as it sounds.

 Firstly I went to the museum some time ago in the hope that the axe may have been on public display however, this was not to be. Even though there were some good samples on display they were not the right ones. To access the rest of the collection I had to book an appointment for another time. This is did and yesterday I made my way to Kendal to tick off the two required references of said axe.

 Once in the storeroom of the museum my task was there in front of me. The complete collection of axes belonging to Mr Plint were there on a table in 5 boxes for me to inspect.

There are over 300 items. Of course for some reason I was expecting 300 large chunks of rock in the vague shape of worked axes but this was not the case, many of the items were really quite small flakes of sharp rock. How anyone can identify these as workings from an axe factory is beyond me, most just looked like innocuous stone chippings. This made my task easier as their size was nothing like what I was looking for. The other advantage was that the boxes were not only labelled with the area from where the contents were collected but within was a printed list of every single item. This was done in 1994, long after Wainwright had used the sample for the Pictorial guide. There were just two of the boxes from the Pike o' Stickle region. One box of which were just small flakes so they were instantly disregarded. The other box was more like it, large rocks with some shape. However, it was not to be, only two samples were anything like the one I was after in shape or size. But, they were definitely not the right one.

The nearest.

Being the right length and width this one just isn't worked enough, how frustrating. I took my time and checked every other box and it's contents with no joy. I then read all of the printed listings in the boxes, all samples were present and correct and only a very few were of the right shape.

 In all my research for the project I had thought that this axe would have been one of the easiest to locate I Kendal Museum. I can only conclude that if the actual axe was in the museum at the time of AW's work then between that time and 1994 when the collection was catalogued the axe has gone missing, who knows.

 I have a couple of options, firstly, to admit defeat on this one and paint the sample shown above which is the nearest to the original or I will contact the local Kendal paper, just in the off chance that someone locally has somehow acquired the sample fro the museum. All in all, a touch frustrating, I don't like using second best.

I will keep you posted.