Holland-on-Sea Cliff is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in

Holland-on-Sea Holland-on-Sea is a seaside town in east Essex in England. Located south of the little village of Great Holland and directly north of Clacton-on-Sea, it has bus links to Walton-on-the-Naze and Clacton-on-Sea. It is a short coastal walk down the ...

, north-west of

Clacton-on-Sea Clacton-on-Sea is a seaside town in the Tendring District in the county of Essex, England. It is located on the Tendring Peninsula and is the largest settlement in the Tendring District with a population of 56,874 (2016). The town is situated ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

. It is a

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

site. This site is of great importance in understanding the evolution of the

London Basin The London Basin is an elongated, roughly triangular sedimentary basin approximately long which underlies London and a large area of south east England, south eastern East Anglia and the adjacent North Sea. The basin formed as a result of compre ...

, and it is the type site for two different gravels. The "Lower Holland Gravel" was the final terrace laid down by the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

before the river was diverted south during the

Anglian glaciation The Anglian Stage is the name used in the British Isles for a middle Pleistocene glaciation. It precedes the Hoxnian Stage and follows the Cromerian Stage in the British Isles. The Anglian Stage is correlated to Marine Isotope Stage 12 (MIS 12), ...

around 450,000 years ago. The "Upper Thames Gravel" was deposited when the Thames was blocked by ice and not reaching the area. As the terraces can be attributed to the Anglian glaciation, they provide a fixed point for correlation other Anglian sequences in southern Britain and on the Continent. The site is a short stretch of the slope between the Esplanade and the Promenade, opposite Haven Avenue. No geology is visible.

References

{{SSSIs Essex Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Essex Geological Conservation Review sites