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EFC Centre at Wat Tyler Country ParkOur centre is available for visits on a pre-booked basis on Wednesdays between 10am - 4pm. The Club’s activities and displays are also usually open to the public on the first Saturday of the month 11am - 4pm.

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About the Essex Field Club
Essex Field Club
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Geology Site Account

A-Z Geological Site Index

Eastbrookend Country Park, DAGENHAM, London Borough of Dagenham, TQ509855, General geological site

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Site category: Palaeolithic site

Site of geological interest with disused pits that have provided information about the underlying geology and Palaeolithic archaeology. Any further significant excavations in the area should be recorded.

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Site description

Created in 1995, Eastbrookend Country Park is situated in the Dagenham Corridor, a strip of green belt land that separates Dagenham from Romford. The site of the country park was previously used for quarrying sand and gravel and the numerous lakes were former pits which, in the 1920s provided aggregate for the giant Becontree housing estate nearby. Gravel was still being extracted in 1977 when a dragline operator found several fine Palaeolithic hand-axes in a pit (TQ 509 855) close to what was then May & Bakers pharmaceutical factory.

South of the railway, and accessible by a footbridge, is Boyers Lake (TQ 505 852) which is also a former gravel pit. During its working life this pit also yielded Palaeolithic flint tools including six hand-axes which are now in the Museum of London. Adjacent to Boyers Lake is the Beam Valley, an important area for nature conservation which is shortly to be developed as an extension to the Country Park.

Eastbrookend Country Park is of geological interest as it straddles two adjacent terraces of the Thames. North of the railway is the higher Lynch Hill/Corbets Tey Terrace and the gravel of this terrace is thought to have been laid down by the river about 300,000 years ago (Marine Isotope Stages 10-8). South of the railway, and at a lower elevation, is the younger Taplow/Mucking Terrace and the gravel here is about 200,000 years old (Marine Isotope Stages 8-6). From the grid references given in the reports of the finds the flint tools appear to have been associated with two separate terraces and are therefore of different ages. However, it is most likely that they all came from the gravel of the lower terrace. The makers of these tools were tribes of nomadic Neanderthal hunters exploiting the wildlife on what was then the shoreline of the Thames.

The Country Park has a visitor Centre known as the Millennium Centre.



One of several flint hand axes found in 1977 in a gravel pit that now forms a lake in Eastbrookend Country Park. Illustration: Essex County Council.

 

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Reference: Wymer 1985 (p.296), Buckley & Martingell 1979.

Geology Site Map
A-Z Geological Site Index