John Frere

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For the English poet and diplomat, see John Hookham Frere.

John Frere (1740–1807) was an English antiquary and a pioneering discoverer of Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic tools in association with large extinct animals at Hoxne, Suffolk in 1797.

Frere was born in Roydon Hall, Norfolk. In 1766, Frere received his MA from Gonville and Caius College and subsuqently held several political offices.

An interest in the past, instigated by observing worked stone tools in a clay mining pit, led him to become a member of the Society of Antiquities and the Royal Society and to conduct excavations at Diss, near his home.

[edit] External links

• Information on Frere and his relatives
• Stone tools excavated by Frere