Monument record 0751600000 - Gravel pit south of Wendover

2 mammoth tusks from gravel pit, Wendover, donated by Sir Alan Barlow (B1).
The County Museum has an Elephas primigenius tusk, recorded only as from ‘Wendover Pleistocene gravel’ (1967.386.1), whose accession is noted in Recs Bucks 15, 148. Its findspot can, however, be located more precisely since the donor was recorded as Sir Alan Barlow and Sherlock (1922, 51), notes: 'Rather less than a mile south of Wendover … where a large gravel pit shows that the gravel is 25’ thick and is composed largely of angular flint (see Frontispiece). … Remains of mammoth now in the possession of Sir Thomas Barlow, have been found at this locality. No flint-implements were found during a search made for them with the assistance of Mr. Reginald Smith of the British Museum.'
The second-edition OS six-inch map of 1900 shows a ‘Gravel Pit’ adjacent to the Wendover-Amersham Road on the east side less than a mile south of Wendover. This is the only pit in the area and there can be no doubt that it is the pit referred to by Sherlock. Plate 1 of his report has an illustration of ‘Deposits of gravel in the Wendover Gap’, and although the pit is not named in the caption it is undoubtedly the same one. Notable in the photograph are a series of deep ice wedges (‘piping’, in Sherlock p. 51-2); features that form under periglacial conditions and which must post-date deposition of the gravel deposit containing the tusk.
Part of the pit is now occupied by a rifle range. A visit shows that although now largely infilled, it was formerly much larger than the area currently occupied by the range. Its extent is confirmed by an air photograph of 1948 (HER Run 297, image 4150). Some grassed-over faces remain. According to John Collier, the pit was certainly on Sir Thomas Barlow’s land. Haulage from the pit was by Wood and Whittaker of Tring Road, Wendover, who feature in Kellys Buckinghamshire Directory for 1935. According to Mr. Collier they were still operating at the pit in the late 1940s.
The area around the pit to the east and south is relatively level at around 157m OD, just a little higher than the present watershed height. It seems possible that the whole is a relict river terrace. The deposit is nearly 80 metres higher than the Quarrendon terrace associated with the Thame to the north, so cannot be part of that recorded sequence. The Geological Survey map (238) of 1946, but surveyed much earlier, shows the deposit as ‘valley gravels’ but they are later noted by Sherlock (1935) who suggests that the material represents run-off from a glacier edge and an accompanying lake to the north. Sumbler (1995, 108-9) notes the Wendover gravels together with the Princes Risborough Sand and Gravel deposit which he attributes to a pre-Thames Wye. He notes the drainage system of ‘consequent’ streams flowing down the dipslope of the chalk and entering the Thames to the southeast. The valleys of this early drainage system are truncated by the Chiltern scarp, which forms the south-eastern margin of the Thame valley; the valleys therefore, pre-date the development of the River Thame, but could well have been formed (or been modified) when there was a substantial body of ice to the north (Sherlock 1960). This would have been the Anglian ice sheet (for its probable extent see Sumbler 1996, Fig 32). In view of the difference between the highest point in the present town of Aylesbury (the parish church is at c 82m OD) and the Wendover deposit at c 157m (present ground level), there must have been a substantial mass of ice, at an absolute minimum 75 metres thick, above the subsequent site of Aylesbury in order to provide the run-off that produced the Wendover gravel. A ‘mammoth’ tusk would not be expected at this early date. The deposit would obviously repay re-examination (B2).
'Gravel pits' marked on first edition 25-inch OS map, first edition 6-inch OS map, second edition 6-inch OS map of 1900, National Grid 6-inch provisional edition OS map of the late 1950s-early 1960s. 'Rifle range' marked on NG 1:10,000 OS map of 1976 (surveyed 1970-1972) (B3).