More than a hundred people went to the roadshow focused on local prehistoric beach finds at St Bartholomew’s Church Hall, Holland-on-Sea.

The Standard described the background to this initiative and pictured John Ratford and Paul Buisson with some of their discoveries last month.

They organised this event in conjunction with marine archaeologist Dr Rachel Bynoe, from Southampton University. Local folk in the manner of TV’s Antique Roadshow brought their mostly beachcombed booty for verification by Rachel and a colleague from the British Museum.

This was to be Neanderthal flint-tool expert Dr Becky Scott, who had on a previous visit verified the 200,000-year age of many of the flints found by Paul and John, which placed the area in the top three UK Neanderthal sites from the amount of flint already seen

She was unable to attend, but was ably replaced by palaeo-mammalogist Dr Simon Parfitt.

He identified many of the disarticulated bones and teeth discovered in equal quantity to worked flint.

Alongside handaxes and large broad blades and flakes many fairly intact elephant and even rhino teeth have been found.

These are largely of the colder Ice Age period woolly rhino and mammoth. Teeth of a cave bear and probable lion also caught Simon’s attention. A walrus jaw is already at Oxford for dating analysis.

These contrast with related mega-fauna from the milder interglacial period that have been more rarely found, associated with Clacton’s older 400,000-year-old proto-Thames/Medway submerged channel with simple flake tools but significantly no hand-axes.

They denote the Clactonian culture buried in the cliffs and beach west of the pier as far as Jaywick.

The recent beach finds bonanza running in the other direction towards Holland Haven that led to this roadshow arose quite differently.

Although displaced material with the major beach recharge of sand and gravel, their origin is pinpointed to a sandbank [Area 447] some 19km east of Walton.

Detailed geological feasibility surveys using hi-tech devices were employed before dredging under license began. Rachel Bynoe has been helpfully passed much of this information and even extracted cores samples.

Study of these will enable better understanding of the stratigraphic position of these remains remarkably surviving not just millennia but then being unceremoniously sprayed on to the beach. The public interest shows that the local imagination has been fired and even encouraged some citizen science.