Story of Wandsworth

Giants of the Ice Age

The remains of huge mammoth and woolly rhinoceros from the last Ice Age have been found in Wandsworth and Battersea. The landscape at that time, about 20,000 years BC, would have looked like modern Siberia: frozen soil, bogs, a few trees such as pine and larch, and grasslands during the winter seasons.

The mammoth and rhino, together with other animals adapted to the cold such as wild horse, reindeer and giant deer, were all hunted by the first generation of modern man. During the severe cold period around 450,000 BC, the great sheets of ice which covered northern Britain moved southwards. This forced the River Thames to move from the valley of St. Albans to its present position.

The first settlers

The first people lived here about half a million years ago. During the next 480,000 years, the climate fluctuated dramatically with several ice ages and warmer periods in between.

Over the centuries, people changed from being wandering hunters, to farmers and craftsmen living in settled communities. None of these people left written descriptions of their everyday lives. What we know about them has to be pieced together from archaeological finds.

In this area, although no major settlements have been found, many prehistoric items have come from the river areas where early people would have settled to be near a water supply.