Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The Butley River can be seen in the middle distance in Figure 259, joining the River
Ore to flow parallel to and behind the spit.
FIG
260.
Episodes in the evolution of the coast from Aldeburgh (Fig. 247,
d6
) southward,
past Orford Ness (
d5
).
FIG
261.
Looking southwards across Southwold (Fig. 247,
d7
) towards Walberswick.
(Copyright Aerofilms)
At the northeastern corner of Area 13, Southwold (Fig. 261) is attractively located
on small cliffs carved into Crag deposits of the Late Tertiary. This material is preserved
in a plateau between the low ground of the River Blyth valley to the south, and the low
ground immediately to the north, where Buss Creek enters the sea at Sole Bay.
Southwold (
d7
) and Dunwich (
d8
) provide another beautiful example of the way
natural coastal processes, in this case storm wave activity, can change the shape of the
coastline on a historical timescale (Figs 262 and 263). Over the last 1,600 years, since
the end of the Roman period, the position of the outer coast at Southwold has moved
inland by more than 1 km. This coastal retreat simply measures the success of storm
wave attack in removing Late Tertiary Crag material from the landscape during this re-
cent period, which was long after the sea reached approximately its present level as a
result of the Flandrian sea-level rise. Some of the sand and gravel moved by the storm
