The Brockley Jack Whalebone was believed to have been dug up along the Buckthorne Railway Cutting during the excavations for the Croydon Canal and exchanged for a pint at the Brockley Jack. Through the years it was mistakenly believed to be the bone of a mammoth, an elephant, the shoulder blade of Dick Turpin's horse Bess and until very recently, the scapula of a blue whale.

It hung outside the Brockley Jack from around 1863 on an old Elm Tree. When the new public house was built to replace the old medieval pub in 1898 the bone was hung on the gable of the pub until it reportedly fell on to a Rolls Royce decades later. It was then replaced by the plaster copy still on the gable today. Since then the bone was moved around to different places inside the pub until it was finally hung over the fire place.

In 2022 the Fourth Reserve Trustees visited the Brockley Jack pub for a meeting and noticed that the Whalebone was no longer displayed inside the pub and that staff were unsure of its whereabouts.

As custodians of the Buckthorne Cutting Nature Reserve where the bone is said to have been found, we were alarmed that it was missing and we alerted Greene King Brewery and the local community. With support from local people, call-outs for information on social media and help from the Crofton Park Local History Group, the whalebone was eventually tracked down to the home of a family with close connections to Crofton Park and the Brockley Jack who said they had saved the artefact from being thrown away by the pub.

After negotiations with Greene King Brewery and the family it was decided by Greene King that the whalebone would be returned to Crofton Park but under the ownership of the Fourth Reserve Foundation.

The Fourth Reserve Foundation retrieved the bone and paid for a conservation conditions assessment and treatment proposal from a Conservator registered with the Institute of Conservation.

The report confirmed that the bone is the genuine article and likely the scapula of a blue whale. The story attracted the attention of the Natural History Museum and in 2025 Dr.Richard Sabin, Principal Curator, Mammals Vertebrates Division and Dr Sophia Nicolov, an environmental historian working with Richard on the NHM’s Cetacea research collection, came to see the whalebone.

Richard confirmed that the bone is actually the shoulder blade of an Atlantic Right Whale, a species very close to extinction and as such a rare and nationally important artefact.

The Fourth Reserve Foundation now need to carry out the restoration works recommended and fund a cabinet according to the specific recommendations within the conservation report so that it can be looked after and preserved having suffered from weathering and damage.