202
GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE NEW RAIL-
WAY BETWEEN ILFORD AND WOODFORD,
ESSEX.
By T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., P. Anthrop. Inst., Vice-President E.F.C.
This new railway leaves the Great Eastern Main-line
between Ilford and Seven Kings Stations. Thence its course
for more than three miles is nearly due north, a little east of Ley
Street and Barking Side and across Fairlop Plain. But before
reaching Manor Road, which connects Woodford Bridge and
Chigwell Row, it makes a westerly turn, and crossing the
Hainault and Chigwell roads a little south of their junction near
Chigwell, passes between the farmhouses known as Newbarns
and Luxborough, and bending southward joins the Loughton,
Epping and Ongar branch about midway between the stations
of Woodford and Buckhurst Hill.
The sections visible along its course were either between its
Ilford end and the Cran Brook, on the northern side of Ley
Street, or from a few yards south of the Manor road to a few yards
west of Chigwell Road. Between the Cran Brook and the
cutting which begins south of Manor Road the line is on an
embankment. West of the Chigwell Road the surface of the
ground rapidly slopes down to the level cf the marshes of the
Roding, which are crossed by the new line on an embankment.
There is a short slight cutting close to the junction with the
Loughton branch.
Looking northward from the Ilford end of the new line, a
glance shows that thence to Ley Street the cutting is in old
Thames river deposits, the height of the flat surface above
ordnance datum rising gently northwards. It is about 40 ft. at
Cauliflower Lane (a) the most southerly road crossed ; a little
more than 50 ft. at Ward's Lane (b) ; while at Hatch Lane (c),
close to but south of Ley Street, it is from 68 to 70 ft., where
the line crosses. The beds in the cutting between these lanes
consist of gravel, or gravel and sand at the bottom, capped by a
variable thickness of loam. No peaty beds were seen. But at
one spot, a little north of Ward's Lane, some calcareous concre-
tionary lumps appeared towards the bottom of the loam. They
were, in all probability, the remains of a bed of shell marl. The
surface loam thickened considerably between Cauliflower Lane