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GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON THE NEW RAIL- 

 WAY BETWEEN ILFORD AND WOODFORD, 

 ESSEX. 



ByT. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., F. Anthrop. Inst.. Vice-President E.F.C. 



This new railway leaves the Great Eastern Main-Hne 

 between Ilford and Seven Kings Stations. Thence its course 

 for more than three miles is nearly due north, a little east of Ley- 

 Street and Barking Side and across Fairlop Plain. But before 

 reacliing Manor Road, which connects Woodford Piridge and 

 Chigwell Row, it makes a westerly turn, and crossing the 

 Hainault and Chigwell roads a little south of their junction near 

 Chigwell, passfs between the farmhouses known as Newbarns 

 and Luxborough, and bending southward joins the Loughton, 

 Epping and Ongar branch about midway between the stations 

 of Woodford and Buckhurst Hill. 



The sections visible along its course were either between its 

 Ilford end and the Cran Brook, on the northern side of Ley 

 Street, or from a few yards south of the Manor road to a few yards 

 west of Chigwell Road. Between the Cran Brook and the 

 cutting which begins south of Manor Road the line is on an 

 embankment. West of the Chigwell Road the surface of the 

 ground rapidly slopes down to the level cf the marshes of the 

 Roding, which are crossed by the new line on an embankment. 

 There is a short slight cutting close to the junction with the 

 Loughton branch. 



Looking northward from the Ilford end of the new line, a 

 glance shows that thence to Ley Street the cutting is in old 

 Thames river deposits, the height of the flat surface above 

 ordnance datum rising gently northwards. It is about 40 ft. at 

 Cauliflower Lane [a) the most southerly road crossed ; a little 

 more than 50 ft. at Ward's Lane [b) ; while at f latch Lane (c), 

 close to but south of Ley Street, it is from 68 to 70 ft., where 

 the line crosses. The beds in the cutting between these lanes 

 consist of gravel, or gravel and sand at the liottom, capped by a 

 variable thickness of loam. No peaty beds were seen. But at 

 one spot, a little north of Ward's Lane, some calcareous concre- 

 tionary lumps appeared towards the bottom of the loam. They 

 were, in all probability, the remains of a bed of shell marl. The 

 surface loam thickened considerably between Cauliflower Lane 



