specimens have been collected from Aveley. More recently specimens have been found
in motorway excavations for the M1l and A13 roads. Other recent finds have come
from East Mersea, Walton and Wrabness. It is always worth glancing at spoil heaps
from excavations. Only yesterday I was eagerly peering at a heap of gravel andbrickearth
from a deep excavation to remove some buried fuel tanks on the site of a recently closed
petrol station in Dagenham!!
Some elephant hunters:
Numerous people have collected the occasional elephant or mammoth tooth. However
there are not many people who have methodically collected elephant remains. Half a
dozen are listed below.
Henry Menish (1735-1809), collected a Pliocene mastodont tooth from Harwich
beach and elephant remains from Walton including an elephant tusk and four elephant
grinders and a mammoth tooth (George 1997a p.4).
John Brown (1780-1857) of Stanway, collected elephant and mammoth bones from
Walton in the 1830s. He also found elephant bones at Clacton and Grays; and mam-
moth bones at Ballingdon, Heddingham, Lamarsh and Lexden.
John Gibson (1778-1840), a Yorkshire man, discovered, in 1824, an entire mammoth
skeleton in a large Ilford brick pit at a depth of 16 feet in a tenacious clay. Unfortu-
nately he was unable to reassemble the skeleton, estimated to have been at least 4.5
metres high. In 1833 Gibson donated some Ilford elephant bones to the Yorkshire
Museum. He also presented some Ilford mammoth bones to the Royal College of
Surgeons (George 1998 p. 14).
Dr. Richard Payne Cotton (1820-1877), was collecting fossils elephants from Ilford in
the 1840s (George 2000 pp. 12-18). He bequeathed his collection to the Geological
Survey Museum. His collection included 59 elephant and mammoth bones as follows:
3 tibiae, 4 heads of femora, 1 astragalus, 2 condyles of femora, 3 vertebrae, 1 calca-
reum, 3 tusk portions, 1 humerus, 2 phalanges, 1 patella, 1 lower jaw with teeth and
37 teeth of all ages.
Sir Antonio Brady (1811-1881), was the greatest of Essex elephant hunters (George
1999 pp. 15-26). He had a virtual monopoly of fossils from the Uphall pit. His
magnificent collection of Ilford fossil vertebrates, which included 271 mammoth
bones and 13 elephant bones was catalogued by William Davies (Davies 1874).
Brady took great care in excavating the finds which involved him in great expense.
He sold his finds for £525 to the British Museum in 1874.
Samuel Hazzledine Warren (1872-1958), collected some fine elephant teeth and
mandibles from Clacton and mammoth remains from the Lea Valley.
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 52, January 2007
9