Geology Site Account
Locate The Ilford brick pits, Clements Estate Pit and Cauliflower Pit on map
Immediately to the east of Uphall Pit, on the east side of Ilford lane, was another important pit known as Clements Estate Pit (TQ 438 861) which was also reported to be in operation in 1812. This pit also produced countless fossils over many years including two enormous tusks and a large mammoth thigh bone. The fossils here were recorded as being about 7 metres (21 feet) from the surface. This pit had closed by the 1860s.
The third site was the Cauliflower Pit or High Road Pit (TQ 447 871) which was situated north of the railway line, east of the town centre. It first came to public attention when John Gibson tried to excavate a largely complete skeleton of an elephant in 1824 but unfortunately was unsuccessful due to the condition of the bones. In the 1830s the pit provided the clay for the bricks for the railway, which was then in the course of construction, and great numbers of bones were successfully exhumed by Gibson with the cooperation of Thomas Curtis, the then owner of the brickworks. One of the mammoth tusks recovered by Gibson was said to be ‘twelve feet six inches in length, following the outward curvature’. The Cauliflower pit was still in operation in 1898, long after the other Ilford pits had closed.
Opposite Cauliflower Pit, on the south side of the High Road next to the cemetery, was another pit (TQ 450 867) which appears to have been working at the same time as the Cauliflower Pit and is shown on the 1894 Ordnance Survey map. The pit was between the High Road and Green Lane, opposite the Cauliflower Public House, and on the site now occupied by the sports stadium. Rather confusingly this pit has sometimes also been called the Cauliflower Pit. There is no doubt that this pit must also have produced fossil mammals but no specific mention of this locality is made in the Victorian reports although some references to the ‘High Road Pit’ or the ‘London Road Pit’ may have been referring to this pit and finds attributed to the Cauliflower Pit may have included this pit as well.
The age of the fossils has been controversial for many years. Ilford sits at the junction of two Thames terraces, the higher and older one known as the Lynch Hill/Corbets Tey terrace and the lower and younger one known as the Taplow/Mucking terrace. The southern deposits at Uphall Pit date from a temperate, interglacial stage within the Taplow/Mucking terrace which is correlated with Marine Isotope Stage 7 (MIS 7) and is therefore about 200,000 years old. This is the same interglacial stage that is represented at Aveley further downstream (a site that has also yielded fossil elephants) and it has sometimes been referred to as the ‘Ilford Interglacial’. However, based on a recent reinterpretation of the sections drawn and described by early geologists it has been argued that the fossiliferous deposits in the northern pits, such as the Cauliflower Pit, belong to an interglacial within the Lynch Hill/Corbets Tey Formation and are therefore older. The reported occurrence of hippopotamus from the Ilford pits is now thought to be erroneous as this species was only present in Britain during the later Ipswichian interglacial stage.
The reason for the remarkable abundance of fossils is not known but we can make some assumptions. The bones were rarely found to be broken or damaged but it was not often that two or more bones of the same animal were found together. These animals did not therefore die in the place where they were found but were probably swept a short distance down river as floating carcasses and disarticulated bones. It is possible that the stretch of the Thames at Ilford at this time was wide and slow moving with a broad meander and a sloping bank allowing bones to accumulate in the shallows. Regular burial of the bones by silt and sand would have ensured their preservation. However, if the fossiliferous deposits from the northern and southern pits are of different ages it seems to be a coincidence that such a rich accumulation of bones occurred in the same area twice, separated by a time interval of perhaps 80,000 years.
The Ilford mammoth. Collected in 1863 it is the largest complete mammoth skull to have been found in Britain. The tusks are 3 metres (10 feet) long. 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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