118 ON THE GRAVELS NEAR BARKING SIDE,
A very good section in a Gravel Pit at the Parish Sewage Farm
south of Wanstead Park was shown to me by Mr. Crouch. It is
composed of somewhat coarse material (flints, quartzites, Lower
Greensand chert, sarsen, sandstone, quartz, etc.), and is roughly, but
evenly, stratified. Its level is about 25 feet O.D.4
In a neighbouring mass of this low level gravel, which borders
the marshes of the Lea from Leyton up to the reservoirs of the East
London Waterworks near Walthamstow, a series of excellent sections
have been opened up during the construction of the Tottenham and
Forest Gate Railway. I have had the advantage of visiting these
sections in company with Mr. Whitaker and Mr. T. V. Holmes, and
also with the Geologists' Association, under the directorship of Mr.
J. W. Gregory.5
The gravel is very like that at Wanstead Park, roughly stratified
and coarse. Subangular flints and flint pebbles form the bulk of the
gravel, but there is a great quantity of other material. I noted some
pebbles which are probably sarsen stone, or sandstone from the
Eocene beds, some fragments of Lower Greensand chert, a piece of
iron grit probably from an older gravel, and much small quartz, and
the following pebbles, which are probably erratics from the Glacial
Drift :—
Large quartz pebbles.
Very hard, brown, close-grained sandstone.
Hard, light brown sandstone, with veins of quartz.
Dark red coarse-grained sandstone.
Brown and white soft sandstones, speckled with fragments
which are probably mica.
White vitreous quartzite.
Two pebbles of igneous rock.
Besides these stones I have some specimens from Walthamstow
which deserve special notice. The first are small quartzite pebbles
of a purple-pink or mauve colour, sometimes not unlike that of the
penny postage stamp now in use, and they are of interest because
they can be matched by pebbles which I have collected from the
Bunter Pebble Beds of Nottinghamshire, and I have no doubt they
come from that formation. I have found similar pebbles in the
Glacial Gravel of St. Alban's, Radlett, and Rainsford End near
Chelmsford, in the Thames Gravels at Dawley near West Drayton,
4 See Whitaker, op. cit., p. 409.
5 Proc. Geol. Assoc. 1892, vol. xii , p. 338 ; Essex Nat. 1892, vol. vi., p. 97.