The Ancient Fauna of Essex. 3
there. This tract was not disafforested until 1777 (17
Geo. III. c. 17). Chapman and Andre's Map of Essex (1777)
is the earliest accurate map of this county, and shows at
least a portion of the tract under consideration still covered
with forest-trees, and styled "Walthamstow Forest." Indeed
so late as the first Ordnance Survey Map (published in
1805) the "Lower Forest" extended close to Maryland
Point, Stratford.
Turning from the written evidence of the Epping Forest
district, it is of no small interest to ascertain what can be
learnt from the unwritten records of prehistoric times which
have been preserved to us in the ancient and modern river-
valley deposits, the brick-earths, shell-marls, and peat, so
characteristic of large portions of this area. Bearing in mind
the former continuity and extent of Epping and Walthamstow
Forests, and the very recent date at which a large part of this
area has been enclosed and cultivated, we can the more
readily understand how it has happened that such interesting
prehistoric remains as are here met with, only a few feet
below the surface, have remained hidden for so many
centuries, undisturbed by that most restless of all beings—
Man,—to be unearthed at this time, when their interest
can be appreciated and their significance understood.
The best illustration of the remains of the more recent
fauna of the river-valleys of the Lea and the Boding was that
exposed in the district of Walthamstow, which, in 1868-69,
was laid bare by the East London Water-works Company in
preparing their large filter-beds and reservoirs, which extended
from the Lea Bridge Road in a northerly direction beyond
Tottenham Railway Station, and occupied at that time the
area marked on the maps as Walthamstow Forest. Their
works in 1869 covered more than one hundred acres, the
depth of the general floor nowhere exceeding ten feet; but
the trenches made for the "puddled walls" in the centre of
the artificial embankments went down to a depth of twenty
to twenty-four feet. The subjoined sections, taken by me in
the summer of 1869, will serve to show the nature of these
deposits:—