Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI

Slipping through time, let’s journey to Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI. This unassuming site, tucked away on the western outskirts of Cambridge, holds clues to a distant past. Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI isn’t a place of scenic beauty today. It’s been filled in, resting quietly beneath playing fields and private land. But imagine this place 450,000 years ago, during the Anglian ice age. Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI was a landscape shaped by icy fingers, marked by ice wedges – a testament to a long period of permafrost. Picture a vast, open expanse, populated by non-marine molluscs and the occasional large vertebrate. This was a harsh, yet thriving environment. And here, at Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI, early humans left their mark. The site boasts the most extensive collection of stone tools in Cambridgeshire. These tools, predating the Anglian ice age and dating back to the Cromerian Stage, speak to the ingenuity of early humans. They crafted tools of Chellean, Acheulian, Early Levalloisian, and Clactonian types, showcasing a diverse range of skills. Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI may be hidden from view now. But the echoes of the past resonate within the earth, telling a story of ice, ancient life, and the dawn of human ingenuity. Though we can’t walk amongst the ice wedges or hold the ancient tools, the story of Traveller’s Rest Pit SSSI allows us to connect with a time long past. A time when Cambridge was a very different place.