Ice age giant: the woolly mammoth, a 15-foot-tall elephantine creature with a thick coat against extreme cold, once roamed the hills where Coulsdon stand today
There was a time, about 20,000 years ago, when in the area where today a few cattle graze on Farthing Downs and Coulsdon locals take their pet pooches for a daily walk, there roamed across the land 15-foot-tall giants, the woolly mammoths.
Sign of the times: the woolly mammoth finial, the 11th in a series sponsored by the residents’ association
We know this because, around 130 years ago, workers building a new railway line managed to dig down and discover the skeleton of a long-dead predecessor of the African elephant.
Coulsdon’s woolly mammoth dated from 100,000 BC.
Humans lived alongside the woolly mammoths, through an ice age which made life tough for all living things, with vast sheets of ice covering large parts of Europe. Mammoths existed until around 10,000 years ago – so surviving long after the first pyramids were built in Egypt. But they eventually succumbed, possibly hunted out of existence, or unable to adapt to an ancient version of climate change.
Now, the latest finial on the Coulsdon Art Trail celebrates the discovery of the prehistoric remains. In January 1897, when the London and Brighton Railway was constructing the Quarry Line, a fast track that went through the grounds of Cane Hill, navvies doing the hard work dug out the woolly mammoth skeleton some 40 feet below the surface.
The skeleton was exhumed and presented to the Horniman Museum.
Positoned high on the top of a street sign near the steps from Brighton Road to Coulsdon South Station, the woolly mammoth finial is the 11th in a series on the Coulsdon Art Trail, which commemorates the area’s history.
Finials are small, stylised metal models, and have been placed at the top of signposts and lampposts around Coulsdon town centre, commemorating the history of Coulsdon and Smitham Bottom. The subjects were selected from a list of suggestions that were put together from a public consultation by East Coulsdon Residents’ Association.
The first three were unveiled in early 2021, with a further two put in place in 2022.
Two more went up during 2023, including one to commemorate John Logie Baird.
The most recent finial was positioned last December, outside the Coulsdon Club, recognising one of Britain’s greatest distance runners, and Coulsdon resident, Gordon Pirie.
Other Coulsdon finials include James Cooper, a notorious highway man who was arrested, tried and executed at Smitham Bottom in August 1749, and the 1788 visit to the town of the Prince of Wales, who was to become King George IV, in order to watch an illegal boxing match.
The Coulsdon Art Trail finials also include portrayals of Cuthraed, the Saxon warrior after whom Coulsdon is named; a flower, the greater yellow rattle, which grows prolifically on Farthing Downs and Happy Valley; the Surrey Iron Railway, Britain’s first public railway; the first cricket match on Lion Green in 1739; and Emmeline Pankhurst, who spoke on Votes from Women in April 1911 at Smitham Parish Hall.
The Coulsdon Art Trail has been paid for by ECRA, with additional donations from individuals and businesses of Coulsdon. If you would like to donate for the next finials, please contact East Coulsdon RA at info@eastcoulsdon.co.uk
Read more: Coulsdon finial gives ‘Puff-puff’ Pirie a proper podium finish
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Read more: Coulsdon signs leave a trail of Saxon kings, cricket and plants
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