Extract below taken from The Kent Downs by Dan Tuson, published 2007 by Tempus. This book is in Longfield library.
Eolith description here on Wikipedia.
The Eolith Controversy
Eoliths were first described by Benjamin Harrison from the dipslopes of the North Downs in west Kent where they were found in large numbers over ploughland, embedded in the drift deposits of the plateau country. Harrison and his supporters, including the eminent geologist Professor Joseph Prestwich, maintained that these coarsely worked flits were the product of human manufacture of some ancient prehistoric society. Our present day knowledge of the Pliocene deposits in which they were found suggest a date of some 2-4 million years ago. One of the sites frequented by Harrison was Parsonage Farm near Stansted where, on 22 May 1865, he found a spread of worn gravel deposits. For many years Harrison and his associates visited the site and found many eoliths and other worked flints of the Neolithic period within these deposits.
Harrison's claim inspired a wealth of debate in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with many geologists and antiquarians arguing that the stones were simply the result of natural flaking of flints as a result of sub-soil pressures. The debate continued for three decades and more and more evidence was discovered that suggested a purely natural origin for eoliths.
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