You would never suspect the Lion Pit's presence. This concealed gorge exists quietly, without the drama its name might suggest, nestled beneath a housing estate, adjacent to the Lakeside shopping centre, and within audible range of the M25 motorway. Encircled as tightly as the newbuild homes that border its cliffs, this is industrial West Thurrock in far south Essex, where the wild marshes persisting on the Blackwater Estuary to the north-east have long vanished.
A Descent into Deep Time
Upon arrival, a fox ambles up the road with urban nonchalance before darting over the edge into the gorge. Following its path leads one down into deep time—specifically, the ice age. This location has yielded some of Britain's most significant Palaeolithic archaeological discoveries.
The gorge is actually a Victorian tramway originally constructed for chalk transport, but excavations uncovered an exceptional section of ice age sedimentation. While little is visible today, glimpses remain high on the slopes beneath dense undergrowth. Scrambling up allows one to touch the Pleistocene, reaching back over 200,000 years.
Treasures from the Past
For more than a century, these deposits have relinquished long-held treasures, revealing the megafauna that once roamed this Thameside site during Neanderthal Britain: bison, bear, mammoth, and elephant. Neanderthals themselves were present here, beneath the enduring chalk cliffs, crafting stone tools and butchering a woolly rhinoceros—evidenced by a pelvis bearing cut marks.
Remarkably, their debris remains buried in the sediment: flint flakes struck from their lithic industries, left where they fell hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Modern Clutter Amid Ancient History
Yet, the mess of contemporary humans is inescapable. A shopping trolley, a mattress, a row of beer cans perched on twigs like makeshift decorations, and a carpet of waste, all entangled by ivy and brambles from more recent times.
This morning embodies true winter: a flint-sharp cold under a crystalline sky as clear and blue as glaciers. The pit's detritus, both ancient and modern, is briefly shrouded in a thick frost. Across the way, a lake below the chalk lies frozen solid—an ice age day for ice age adventures.
