THE CHANGING COASTLINE OF ESSEX 79
The Changing Coastline of Essex
BY A. H. W. ROBINSON
[Read 30 November, 1958]
The essex coastland has long been regarded by
geographers as a marshland area deeply indented by
numerous drowned river valleys. Scenically it cannot
compare with the grandeur of cliff coasts found in other
parts of these islands, although admittedly to some the flat
and rather featureless terrain is aesthetically satisfying if
preserved in its natural state. Unfortunately, in many parts
the original character has largely disappeared through the
spoiling hand of man. Areas still remain, however, which
have escaped this influence, and it is to these we must turn
to study the physiographic processes and forms associated
with this type of coastal setting.
THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE COASTAL AREA
The dominant geological formation throughout the area
is the London Clay, and in many parts, especially along the
northern stretch of coast, it is the cliff-forming deposit
(Fig. 1). It appears at the shoreline from Harwich south-
wards as far as Easiness, though in the Hamford Water
area the clay is overlain by alluvium, and a further small
break occurs where the Holland Brook reaches the sea. In
the area of the Naze, where the London Clay forms cliffs
over 75 feet in height, it is capped by a small outlier of Bed
Crag. Elsewhere the clay is overlain by a variable thickness
of brickearth and gravel. Locally this Pleistocene deposit
may be thick enough to form almost the whole of the
exposed cliff face, as between Clacton and Holland Haven.
The height of the cliffs varies from about 40 feet near Clacton
to over 70 feet in the neighbourhood of Frinton.
West of Eastness, the shoreline borders on the alluvium
of the St. Osyth Marsh. Before the bungalow town of
Jaywick Sands grew up, the coastline was formed of a
number of westward-trending spits enclosing lagoons and
saltings on their landward edge. Only in the shingle spit