EPPING FOREST
PREHISTORIC MAN AND THE ANIMALS
WHICH HE HUNTED
By Dr. H. Woodward, F.R.S., V.P.G.S.
The history of Epping Forest is given in the first
twenty-one pages of this little book. But to every
such area there is a far longer pre-history, hidden
away in the ground beneath us, which, like the
records of ancient Nineveh, may at any time be
brought to light by the excavator.
Two such fragments of prehistoric records of
the Forest may here be given.
1. At the extreme south-east corner of the
Forest, in the district of Forest Gate, Ilford, and
Wanstead, more than two hundred years ago, and
I believe down even to the present day, extensive
areas have been excavated to a depth of 10 to 20
feet to extract the brick-earth, which forms the sub-
soil, and with which the red bricks of the houses
of Queen Anne's time and earlier, in various parts
of London, were mostly built. I examined the
district many times from 1860 to 1865 with Sir
Antonio Brady, F.G.S., long time a resident at
Maryland Point, Stratford, Essex. His fine
collection of animal-remains from Ilford is now
preserved in the British Museum (Natural History),
Cromwell Road, S.W.
This brick-clay is accompanied by beds of
gravel and alluvium, and rests upon the older
Eocene and Chalk, containing marine organisms,
whilst the brick-earth is a superficial terrestrial
deposit, washed down by rains and floods from