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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
registered charity
no 1113963
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Geology Site Account

A-Z Geological Site Index

Folkestone Road allotments, EAST HAM, London Borough of Newham, TQ436829, Historical site only

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Site category: Interglacial deposit

Temporary exposure of fossiliferous deposits. Further excavations in the vicinity could yield further fossils.

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Site description

In September 1958, close to the present Folkestone Road allotments, workmen employed on the site of East Ham Sewage Works uncovered part of the skeleton of an aurochs or wild ox (Bos primigenius), thought to be between 3,000 and 6,000 years old. In August 1959 another partial skeleton was found, also from the sewage works, this time from the Oaken Trough, a tributary of Barking Creek.

Aurochs were ancestors of our present day domestic cattle but were considerably larger, and with their large horns they must have been a formidable sight, especially in large herds. Bulls were over 1.8 metres (6 feet) high at the shoulder and with a horn-spread of up to about 1.2 metres (4 feet). Aurochs were very common during the latter part of the Ice Age and feature prominently in the world-famous 17,000 year-old cave paintings of Lascaux, France. They are thought to have died out in England towards the end of the Bronze Age.

The bones were entombed in peat, overlying river gravel. The land here is extremely low-lying, only a metre or so above sea level, and at the time these animals were trapped it must have been a bog along the bank of Barking Creek.

The bones are now in the Natural History Museum, London. (See also the site entry for Chingford Reservoir excavations).


 

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Reference: Banks 1961

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