Model of how a straight-tusked elephant looked. Photo: apotea_CC BY-SA 3.0
LUMBERING beasts of the Ice Age were discovered in sewers close to Holloway School, according to archaeologists who are mapping Ice Age discoveries in north London.
For years, the fragments of a straight tusked elephant and a hippo had been held for years as exhibits in a dusty corner of the Natural History Museum.
They were found in “Brecknock Crescent” by a 19th century Highgate resident, Dr Nathaniel Wetherall, and have now come to light this week as part of a “London Mammoth map” created by experts at University College London in Bloomsbury.
Neanderthals expert Dr Matthew Pope told the Tribune: “It’s often said that you are likely to be six feet away from a rat in London. But I prefer to wonder how far might you be from a woolly mammoth?”
Dr Pope said the Ice Age spanned a “really long period of 2.7 million years” during which there were “regular cycles of climate change” that caused unusual animals to migrate to what is now Islington.
A letter accompanying the exhibits said: “The fragments were found by some men in digging for a sewer on the side of the road leading from Holloway to Camden Town and near Brecknock Crescent.”
Brecknock Crescent no longer exists but old maps show it to be close to the Hilldrop Estate and Holloway School.
During colder spells of the Ice Age giant glaciers would advance down from the north and stretch across much of the country, destroying everything in its path.
Dr Pope said: “When the glaciers were advancing it was so cold that nothing much at all could live in London. But in the warmer cycles, which could last for 20,000 years, you would get hippos and straight tusked elephant. Britain was connected to the continent at the time.”
Straight tusked elephants could weigh up to 15 tonnes and roamed in herds of 15 or more.
Bones from woolly mammoths have been found around Stoke Newington, also listed on the map.
Dr Pope explained how advancing Ice Age glaciers came to a final stop in Highgate, adding: “The furthest south the ice sheet ever gets is to North London – that’s around 450,000 years ago. As it moved forward the ice sheet chewed up all this rock across the Midlands and pushed it down towards, well it is quite specific, the top of Highgate.
“If you stood in Archway and looked north, you would have seen the ground rising up before you and at the top there was metres of ice. When it melts and collapses, all that water coming down – well you can imagine the impact that had.”
The map will be available next year.
