The 5,000 years following the last ice age is what archaeologists term the Mesolithic - the Middle Stone Age.
In general, recognised Mesolithic occupation sites are rare and it is assumed that the people were largely nomadic.
There is very little hard archaeological evidence from the Hentland area although we may assume that
the new wave of Mesolithic immigrants arrived here about 10,000 years ago
In 2004 at Gillow in Hentland parish, just off the A49, archaeologists found a 'microlith' -
a very small (20mm long) worked flint which, with many similar flints were attached to spear-tips by Mesolithic hunters. We have some evidence that the microliths were
attached to spearshafts with resin.
The landscape in which the hunter who lost
this flint lived would have been totally different from that of today.
the Gillow microlith
Until recently there were only 27 finds from the whole of the long
Mesolithic period recorded in the Herefordshire Historic Environment Record (HER). In the Hentland area only two find-spots, both at Fownhope, were known.
Mesolithic hunters were here
By about 7,500 BC temperatures had risen to an average of several degrees higher than today,
establishing the 'Climatic Optimum'. The River Wye had established something approaching its modern course and
trees began to appear in the central Herefordshire plain.
There has been a tendency to over-estimate the density of woodland in this period; it seems
likely that the thick forests of popular imagination never existed and that there was always much open grassland.