England's Historic Seascapes: Withernsea to Skegness
Museum of London Archaeology, 2010. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000104. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Historic England unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
David
Bowsher
Director of Research
Museum of London Archaeology
Mortimer Wheeler House
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London
N1 7ED
UK
Tel: 020 7410 2285
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 935
- ALSF Project Number: 4730
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000104
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
The content of the web-pages below are the result of an English Heritage initiative to preserve and disseminate the results of the full scope of work undertaken under the Seascapes ALSF grant. Data copyright for all material presented on these pages is retained by Museum of London Archaeology and English Heritage.
Seascape
Land/sea use
The Withernsea to Skegness pilot area is characterised by a mixture of different land/seascapes, which are directly related to historic sea-use. These range from the heavily industrialised banks of the Humber to the touristic holiday beaches of the Cleethorpes to Skegness coast. The offshore area is heavily characterised by activities related to industry and navigation. For instance there are eleven licensed aggregate dredging areas in the study area as well as active channel dredging in the Humber Estuary. Other industrial activity includes important inshore and offshore fisheries, hydrocarbon extraction on the Amethyst, Pickering and Sole Gas Fields with major pipeline terminals at Easington and Theddlethorpe. There are proposed offshore wind farms on the Inner Dowsing and Lynn banks. Major shipping lanes are defined on the approaches to the Humber Estuary for craft using the ports of Grimsby, Immingham and Hull and there is a large offshore military training area based around the Donna Nook Firing Range.
Geology
The onshore and immediate offshore geology of the study area is comprised of Chalk bedrock forming a broad wave cut platform culminating in the old shoreline following the Lincolnshire Wolds northwards to Flamborough Head. The coastal area and inshore area of Chalk is covered in thick deposits of Boulder Clay known as the Boulders Bank Formation.
Further offshore the bedrock is a complex of folded and faulted Permian, Triassic and Jurassic strata in which are found the major gas deposits of the southern North Sea. In the shallower areas of the offshore area around the Dogger Bank the bedrock is overlain by sands, gravels and peat dating from the late Devensian and early Holocene when the area was dry land. These deposits known as the Elbow Formation contain cultural and environmental material dating to the Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ages, 10,000 to 6,000 BP (Before Present).
Morphology
The study area comprises approximately 80 km of coastline between Withernsea and Skegness but also includes 120 km length of the tidal Humber Estuary which has a tidal shoreline in excess of 600 km. The study area is set within a highly dynamic estuarine, coastal and marine seascape, with its form being largely influenced by local accumulations of Pleistocene deposits and subsequently by Holocene sea level change, erosion and sediment deposition.
The modern coastline has been formed by a complicated mix of different coastal processes, which continue to act upon it in specific ways. Many areas of the coast are currently eroding away, such as Holderness and the beaches between Mablethorpe and Skegness, while other areas are accreting, such as between Cleethorpes and Mablethorpe and Skegness to Gibraltar Point. As a result of this, some parts of the study area consist of land reclaimed from the sea during the medieval and post-medieval periods.
The offshore seabed morphology can be divided into four main areas all associated with the Devensian glaciation and early Holocene sea level changes. The immediate inshore area is dominated the remnant moraine fields of boulder clay, known as 'overfalls'. To the south and east are large sand 'megaripples' forming banks and holes running northwest to southeast. In the north the seabed is level with variable gravel and sand deposits. To the northeast there is a small area of the Dogger Bank with deposits of peat formed on the remnant land surface of 'Doggerland' the Outer Silver Pit to the south of Dogger Bank is a remnant glacial lake. The whole area is cut by large palaeochannels, such as the Silver Pit, running northeast to southwest formed by the meltwaters of the retreating ice sheet.
