The absence of Erratics in southern Britain - the latest research

Colin A. Whiteman, Periglacial landforms and landscape development in southern England,

Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Volume 136, Issues 1–2, 2025, 101059, ISSN 0016-7878,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pgeola.2024.04.006.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016787824000178)

Abstract: The south-central and south-east England Geological Conservation Review region is unique in Britain in lying completely outside the margins of Quaternary ice sheets. In view of this, the area has been described as a ‘relict periglacial landscape’. This implies that the region has evolved its current form substantially under the influence of seasonal and/or perennial frost. In fact, modern research has demonstrated that permafrost, either continuous or discontinuous, likely existed across probably the whole of the region at different times during the Quaternary...

"There have been a few speculative claims of glaciation occurring within this GCR region (e.g., Martin, 1920; Kellaway et al., 1975), but they have received negligible, if any, support. Far-travelled erratics are conspicuously absent from the region, except on the West Sussex coastal plain around Selsey, and these have been attributed to ice rafting on the basis of striations scored across underlying Cenozoic clays. If there ever were local glaciers within south-central and southeast England, it is unlikely that they would have deposited easily-recognisable erratics. Furthermore, no convincing glacial landforms have been described, and computer modelling (Hubbard et al., 2009; Clark et al., 2018) appears to support the absence of glaciation from this region. Thus it can safely be assumed that, uniquely in Britain, the Quaternary GCR area covering south-central and south-eastern England remained beyond the outermost margins of all Quaternary ice sheets."