 |
|
|
Deer roaming around the White Horse in Quorn! 1988
During road works near the White Horse pub in Quorn in 1988, ancient deer bones were discovered, much to the delight of Ian Montgomery, the son of the landlord, Barry Montgomery. The photograph shows Ian holding the bones and the following item appeared in the local press:
When the deer roamed in long ago Quorn
A reminder that urban society is only asphalt-deep turned up in Quorn the other day when a workman found some blackened old bones in a trench at the side of the road.
County council road-mender Mr. Jack Summerfield came across the bones embedded in gravel as he was improving the kerbing and drainage outside the White Horse pub in Station Road. At first word went round that they were human but butcher David Hutchinson, whose shop is opposite, soon identified them as animal remains.
Schoolteacher Mr. Kingsley Lloyd, a keen amateur palaeontologist who often assists Leicester Museum, confirmed that the seven fragments were parts of the legs and vertebrae of a red deer that roamed this part of the country possibly 10,000 years ago. Mr. Lloyd, of Beacon Avenue, Quorn, who has a bison's head in his living room, along with elephants' teeth and half a mammoth's jaw, could not be certain that the bones are so old because he was not present to see exactly where and how they were unearthed.
It is a chancy business without carbon dating and he admits a possibility that the vanished animal could have died as recently as the Middle Ages. The location in the gravel layer, though, is an indication that they are much, much older. Not that this is of much concern to 12-year-old Ian Montgomery, son of Barry and Chris Montgomery, tenants of the White Horse. Ian is custodian of the ancient bones, which he has already taken to Humphrey Perkins school at Barrow on Soar to show to his teachers and pals. The snag is that it's not a very prepossessing collection, apart from its antiquity. What happens next is undecided!
| |
|
|
 |
Submitted on: |
2016-07-22 |
|
Submitted by: |
Barry Montgomery |
|
Artefact ID: |
1939 |
|
Artefact URL: |
www.quornmuseum.com/display.php?id=1939 |
 |
Print: |
View artefact in printer-friendly page or just on its own (new browser tab). |
|
|
|
|
|
