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Ancient artefacts uncovered at the building site for the new Guildford fire station have been dated back to the Ice Age.

More than 2,400 flints shaped into tools and blades were dug up by archaeologists in the summer and are said to be 14,000 years old.

Nick Truckle, a member of the Surrey County Council heritage conservation team, recommended the dig and said the rare artefacts were in excellent condition, and despite river flooding and development they were found exactly where hunter-gathers had left them in around 12,000 BC.

The archaeological dig has led to the delay of the new fire station build, which also saw a bomb scare when a suspect device was unearthed in June.

The flints are now undergoing further research at Oxford University and there are plans to display them at the Surrey History Centre in Woking when the work is finished.

Councillor Helyn Clack, Surrey County Council’s cabinet member for community services, said: “To have made this important discovery in Surrey is very exciting.

"This is a particularly rare find because there are very few intact British sites as old or complex as this one.

“We now have experts doing detailed studies on these flints, which we hope will give us more answers about the lives of the people that used them and how they lived.”