Geology Site Account
Locate The Ilford brick pits and Uphall Pit on map
In the early 19th century, when Ilford was a village on the London Road, a number of brick pits were in operation in the vicinity and occasionally the workmen came across the bones of large Ice Age mammals in and below the ‘brickearth’. The pits eventually came to the attention of local amateur geologists who, with the co-operation of the owners of the brickworks, obtained an enormous number of specimens of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros and other mammals which can now be seen in the Natural History Museum and the Museum of London.
Three amateur geologists were primarily involved in collecting fossils from Ilford. John Gibson (1778-1840), an industrial chemist, was the first of the main collectors and was collecting at Ilford as early as the 1820s. Many of Gibson’s fossils were bequeathed to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Antonio Brady (1811-1881), a senior civil servant, was the most active and successful of the three, collecting from 1844 onwards. His huge collection of over 900 specimens was purchased by the Natural History Museum. Gibson and Brady were local men and short biographies of them can be found under the entry for St.John’s Church, Stratford (London Borough of Newham) where they were buried and have memorials. Richard Payne Cotton (1820-1877) a physician and surgeon, did not live in Essex but in Cavendish Square, London. Geology was his lifelong hobby and on his death his collection of 246 specimens from Ilford went to the Geological Museum, London. When the museum was taken over by the Natural History Museum in 1985 the ‘Cotton Collection’ was transferred to the British Geological Survey HQ at Keyworth in Nottinghamshire.
Because of the huge number of specimens he acquired, Antonio Brady’s name is most closely associated with the Ilford brick pits. Brady made friends with the owners of the brickworks ensuring that he would be notified when something important was found. He would reward the finder and compensate what was sometimes a whole gang of labourers for loss of earnings while work was stopped to allow
the find to be excavated. Brady supervised the painstaking excavation of a great number of fossil mammals and his Ilford collection includes the bones of mammoth, straight¬tusked elephant, woolly rhinoceros, lion, brown bear, horse, bison, ox and the giant deer Megaloceros, the span of whose antlers was a remarkable 3 metres (10 feet). It is calculated that there are portions of more than 100 mammoths and elephants in his collection, representing individuals of every age and size. The catalogue of the collection, published by Brady in 1874, is preserved in the Essex Record Office in Chelmsford. Most fossils from the Ilford pits were in a very fragile condition which created great problems for the collectors. The catalogue gives a vivid account of the skill and effort required to remove the largest specimens, often involving wooden splints, iron rods and several coats of plaster of Paris, which meant that a large tusk, for example, could weigh several hundredweight. Removing it from the pit was therefore no easy task - involving pulleys and ropes – and preserving it back at the museum was also difficult, the popular technique of the day being to saturate the entire specimen in gelatine.
During their working life the pits received visits from organisations such as the Essex Field Club, of which Antonio Brady was an original member, and the Geologists’ Association. A visit by the Essex Field Club was reported in their Transactions in 1880 under the title ‘A Day’s Elephant Hunting in Essex’. This amusing and informative article also describes a visit to Brady’s private museum at his home in Stratford where there was “a mammoth tusk ten feet in length” and “on the shelves around was a startling display of gigantic skulls and monstrous bones”. The report of another visit to a pit stated that “some very good and interesting specimens were purchased from the workmen, who had collected them in anticipation of such a visit”. It appears that the labourers in the pits often supplemented their income by selling fossils to visitors but it is not known whether the owners of the pits approved of this private enterprise.
The sites extend over a distance of about 2 kilometres (over a mile) between the banks of the River Roding to Seven Kings. At least three pits were in operation during the middle of the 19th century - the heyday of fossil collecting at Ilford – but in the scientific accounts of the time it is not always clear which pit is being described, and to make matters more confusing each pit had several names. The most famous locality was the Uphall Pit, (TQ 436 861) between the Roding and what is now Ilford Lane which is reported to have been producing fossils as early as 1812. Antonio Brady appears to have had almost exclusive access to this site during the years that he was collecting. Contemporary accounts state that the ‘brickearth’ in this pit consisted of yellow sandy loam with shells and the bones were usually found at a depth of about 5 metres (15 feet). Uphall Pit was the site of the discovery of the skull of the ‘Ilford mammoth’ in 1863 which had tusks nearly 3 metres (10 feet) long and is regarded as the most complete mammoth skull ever found in Britain. The catalogue of Brady’s collection records in detail the excavation of the beast and describes how difficult the task was. It states: ‘You must imagine the skull resting half exposed in compact brickearth, requiring a spade or trowel to remove it, but the fossil itself as friable as decayed wood or tinder, the ivory of the tusks being equally soft and shattered.’ Another spectacular find was made in 1865 which was the complete skull of a woolly rhinoceros and it was expertly removed under Brady’s supervision. One of the most remarkable specimens from this pit, however, was a tiny, complete and perfect tusk of a very young elephant, measuring only 22 centimetres (9 inches) in length.
The site of the Uphall Pit is marked by a bronze plaque on the front wall of the Ilford Methodist Church Hall (TQ 4371 8609) at 58, Ilford Lane (between Britannia and Bengal Roads) which was erected by the Borough Council in 1951 to commemorate the Festival of Britain. All the pits have now been filled in and the sites developed and so this plaque is the only record on the ground of what was one of the richest sites for Ice Age fossil mammals in the world.
The plaque commemorating the discovery of fossil mammals at Ilford. Photo: G.Lucy
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Reference: Owen 1846 (p.245 & 248), Woodward 1864, Davis 1874, Walker 1880, Seeley 1891 (p.189-190), Redknap & Currant 1985, Jackson 1986, Hinton 1900, Bridgland 1994 (p.256-260), Gibbard 1994 (p.77-80), Lister & Bahn 1995, George 1997b, George 1998, George 1999, George 2000, Lister & Sher 2001, Scott 2007.
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