Hornchurch Cutting is an 0.8-hectare geological

Site of Special Scientific Interest A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in Great Britain or an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI) in the Isle of Man and Northern Ireland is a conservation designation denoting a protected area in the United Kingdom and Isle of ...

Hornchurch Hornchurch is a suburban town in East London, England, and part of the London Borough of Havering. It is located east-northeast of Charing Cross. It comprises a number of shopping streets and a large residential area. It historically formed ...

in the

London Borough of Havering The London Borough of Havering () in East London, England, forms part of Outer London. It has a population of 259,552 inhabitants; the principal town is Romford, while other communities are Hornchurch, Upminster, Collier Row and Rainham. The ...

. It is also 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 a ...

site. It is at the southern edge of the Anglian ice sheet 450,000 years ago, the most extreme ice age during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

ice ages of the last 2.58 million years. (Technically, the most southerly point reached by an ice sheet during the Quaternary was ''The Dell'', a few metres south of St Andrew's Church.) It is the

type site In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron Age ...

for ''Hornchurch Till'',

boulder clay Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists ...

laid down by the ice sheet in the Ingrebourne Valley. The site was discovered by geologist T. V. Holmes during construction of the Romford to Upminster railway line in 1892. He found a five-metre thickness of boulder clay overlaid by sand and gravel. An excavation in 1983 revealed extensive

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The J ...

fossils and rocks that had been carried from the Midlands by the ice sheet. The site is very important for establishing the glacial stratigraphy of southern Britain. It featured briefly in the

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

TV series ''Birth of Britain'' with

Tony Robinson Sir Anthony Robinson (born 15 August 1946) is an English actor, author, broadcaster, comedian, presenter, and political activist. He played Baldrick in the BBC television series ''Blackadder'' and has presented several historical documentaries ...

in 2011.Channel 4, ''Birth of Britain, Episode 2, Ice'', 2011
/ref> It is between Woodhall Crescent to the north and St Andrews Park and Maywin Drive to the south.

References

{{SSSIs Greater London Sites of Special Scientific Interest in London Geology of London Hornchurch Geological Conservation Review sites

See also

References