Geology Site Account

Site name: Great Yeldham Brickworks (site of)

Grid reference: TL 757379

Brief description of site:

In the nineteenth century, excavations at the former brickworks at Great Yeldham revealed numerous animal bones of Middle Pleistocene age (about 300,000 years old) with evidence of early human activity. The site is one of the few in Britain where butchered bones have been found in a Middle Pleistocene context.

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Details

In the late nineteenth century workmen at a brickworks about 200 metres west of the former Great Yeldham railway station reported finding fossils of ice age mammals from the brickearth which included the bones of brown bear, rhinoceros and elephant. This discovery makes Great Yeldham one of the most interesting fossil localities in north Essex but, as the brickworks closed in 1920, very little is known about the geology of site, or the possible age of the fossils.

In 1896 a report in the journal Essex Naturalist described a visit to the works and to the nearby home of a Mr. Wade of Spaynes Hall who had formed a large collection of fossils from the brick pit. There were fragments of red deer antlers, bones of roe deer, teeth of brown bear, jaw bones of narrow-nosed rhinoceros, teeth of straight-tusked elephant, and teeth and bones of wild ox. Many of the fossils were subsequently donated to the Geological Museum in London (now part of the British Geological Survey collection).

William Whitaker in the Geological Survey Memoir of 1878 describes an earlier visit and remarks that some bones had been split open (?for the sake of their marrow) but there is no record of flint tools or any other evidence of human occupation at this site during the time these animal were alive.

The age of the fossils is difficult to determine but from the fauna present it is thought that they most probably date from the Purfleet interglacial stage (Marine Isotope Stage 9) (Purfleet Interglacial) which makes them about 300,000 years old.

In 2022 a 21 page study of this site was published in the Journal of Palaeolithic Archaeology (Parfitt 2022) which concluded that Great Yeldham was one of the few sites in Britain where butchered bones have been found in a Middle Pleistocene context.

Site of Great Yeldham Brickworks - looking SW across field at TL757379 from public footpath (photo D Potts 2024)