Geology Site Account

London Borough of Waltham Forest, LEYTON, Palaeolithic sites

Leyton and the surrounding area has been a prolific source of Palaeolithic flint implements; over 100 hand-axes and other tools labelled ‘Leyton’ or Leytonstone’ have found their way into museum collections as far apart as Brighton, Cardiff and Colchester. Most were found at the time the area was being developed and, typically for early finds, there is rarely any clue as to their exact provenance. This is unfortunate as the Leyton area contains several patches of gravel from different terraces of the Thames.

One exception to this is a site formerly known as Bents Farm (approximately TQ 388870) which is recorded as the source of 16 hand¬axes and several cleavers, cores and flakes. Another is the slopes of a stream called the Fillebrook (approximately TQ 390873) where there were gravel pits which yielded at least 30 implements including two hand-axes. The Fillebrook flowed through Leytonstone until the end of the nineteenth century when it was placed in a culvert, part of its course now occupied by Fillebrook Road.

Potentially the most interesting Palaeolithic site in Leyton is one that was discovered by pioneering amateur archaeologist Worthington G. Smith (1835-1917). Smith is best known for the discovery of a ‘Palaeolithic floor’ or buried land surface on the other side of the Lea valley in Hackney which was exposed in excavations for foundations and cellars of new housing during the rapid expansion of Victorian London. Flint tools in pristine condition were found in an undisturbed layer of gravel, either at, or close to the exact place where they were last used – a remarkable discovery considering that they may be about 300,000 years old. Smith claimed that the ‘Palaeolithic floor’ was also present on the Essex side of the Lea valley and that he had seen it on the ‘east side of Leyton Street and near Walnut Tree House’ (approximately TQ 380 871) and that here there were ‘flakes as sharp as knives’. Since then, further evidence of this buried land surface has been found during road excavations at South Woodford.

Reference: Cole 1903, Gibbard 1994 (p.81), Wymer 1968 (p.296-297), Wymer 1985 (p.290¬291, 298)

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