ON THE SUPPOSED RAISED BEACH AT SALTBURN

Abstract

(Read November 26th 1919.) The supposed presence of a Raised Beach of Post-Glacial age at Saltburn, at 35 feet above high-water mark, has afforded one of the minor problems in the geology of the Yorkshire Coast. The ‘beach’ was first described by Dr. W. Y. Veitch in the Proceedings of our Society for 1883 (N.S. Vol. VIII., pp. 221–6), and was referred to shortly afterwards by Mr. G. Barrow in his memoir, ”The Geology of North Cleveland” (Mem. Geol. Surv., 1888, p. 71). Dr. Veitch describes the ‘beach’ as “a band of alluvial sand containing shells and fragments of shells,” of which six kinds are mentioned, all common on the present shore ( Purpura, Littorina, Trochus, Lachesis minima and Cypraea europaea ); and states that it was exposed in the steep drift-slope below Saltburn in operations by the Saltburn Improvement Company, the deposit “extending 70 or 80 yards from the bridge up Saltburn Beck, where it abruptly comes to an end.” He also found shells at about the same level “south” [east] of the beck, on the seaward slope of Cat Nab, and considered that they indicated a continuation of the beach. Mr. Barrow gives practically the same particulars, and endorses the view that the deposit represents a Raised Beach, though he notices the abnormal circumstance that a beach of this kind should be preserved in a perishing cliff of soft Glacial beds and should be absent from the neighbouring rocky headland of Huntcliff, composed of much more durable Liassic strata.