FLINT scrapers and blades dating back 4,000 years have been discovered in a mysterious early British settlement at a Grays school.

The Bronze Age artefacts were discovered at an archeological dig at William Edwards School, in Stifford Clays Road.

Now the scrapers, together with fragments of medieval pottery, are at the Thurrock Museum in Orsett Road, Grays, and they will be exhibited in a few weeks, according to curator Jonathan Catton.

A dig started at the end of term with Year Nine pupils, local archeologists and teachers hoping to find late Iron Age artefacts, or Roman objects.

But children and historians were surprised to find much more ancient Bronze Age artefacts.

Mr Catton said: "We have found a diverse range of objects - but not the objects that we thought we would find. There were no Roman finds, but a number of Bronze Age scrapers and blades. These are only small - just 2 to 3cm long - but they are significant because they are so old. They date back to the Bronze Age which was about 2,000 years BC.

"We have got five of the small tools and there are plenty of flakes of flint from the process of making them. The scrapers are long, thin slivers of flintstone and they have working edges."

One of the stones has a smooth cutting side and a rougher serrated edge, as if it was an early multi-purpose tool.

Early flint tools have been hand knapped - or sharpened - and were probably used in cooking, or in the preparation and cutting of meat.

Other finds still being examined include red roofing tiles and fragments of pottery which probably date from medieval times.

Mr Catton said: "The pupils whose project it was became very protective of their dig. They did not want other year groups coming in and accidentally disturbing any of the trenches."

Four trenches were excavated by digger, before the painstaking work of hand digging began.

William Edwards School was built in the late 1950s and early 1960s on a site rumoured to be of archeological interest.

Thurrock's latest finds date to a time when, elsewhere in the world, the Pyramids were still under construction and the city of Troy was at its most powerful.

William Edwards' deputy head, Ralph Henderson, 57, said: "The finds went back to the Bronze Age.

"It is one of the most fantastic things ever done in the school. The children could retrace their heritage. There are few schools in the country built on such a historically rich site."

Finds from other, much more modern times, reflected the changing nature of the William Edwards site, which may also have been a sort of fly-tipping area.

Mr Henderson added: "The area known as Primrose Island' turned out to be a waste disposal unit, particularly from Victorian times. There were Victorian relics, bottles and iron."

Mr Catton said one of the most intriguing finds was a small, lead Mickey Mouse toy which may have been dropped by a child in the 1940s or 1950s.

However, the mysterious site has refused to shed light on its rumoured big secret. Local legend has it that the school land was originally known as Little Graven Field because it stands on a settlement site that was torched 2,000 years ago.