Geology Site Account
Locate Shoebury brick pits on map
The Shoebury area is situated on the Barling Terrace of the Thames which extends from the present River Thames to the River Crouch. The terrace gravel is blanketed with a fine yellow brown silt, known as brickearth, or loess, which is thought to have originated as a windblown dust deposited during the most recent glaciation of Britain (at least 20,000 years ago) although some may be older. The brickearth was extensively quarried for brick making for over a century, the population of South Shoebury increasing from 158 in 1851 to 1080 in 1861, mostly due to the establishment of brickworks which employed over 400 men.
The brickfields produced fossils of Ice Age mammals together with numerous archaeological remains, largely because the calcareous nature of the brickearth preserved a wide range of bones and shells. Fossils from Shoebury in Southend Central Museum include the bones of mammoth, elephant, aurochs, bison, giant deer and brown bear together with various flint hand-axes indicating human occupation of the area at the same time. Many fossils were obtained from labourers in the brickfields by local historian Philip Benton in the nineteenth century. Others were collected by Captain H.D. Sparrow and donated to the museum in the 1930s. Archaeological and geological discoveries were frequent as the brickearth was excavated by hand on a fairly large scale.
Brickearth extraction continued at North Shoebury until 1976. Much of the land is now occupied by housing and retail development but some abandoned pits are now lakes in the wildlife reserve known as Friars Park.
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Reference: Wymer 1985 (p. 327), Wymer & Brown 1995 (p.1-6).
Geology Site Map