Abstract
The Thames system is the largest drainage basin in Britain: the Middle and Lower Thames occupying the London Basin, a syncline of Mesozoic and overlying Tertiary rocks. The Thames is a broadly W–E aligned stream axial to the basin, with tributaries entering from both the northern and southern margins. The catchment includes the south English Midlands, and in the east, the Estuary occurs where the river enters the North Sea. The deposits of the Thames and its tributaries occur from the tops of the highest hills on the basin margin (180 m OD) to below sea level. The highest Thames deposits, the Pebble Gravel Formation, represent the earliest course of the river, post-dating late Pliocene–earliest Pleistocene marine sands. A profound change in gravel lithology occurs in the next youngest units, which form a series of terrace remnants that are characterised by their content of rocks exotic to the present Thames catchment. These Kesgrave Formation units can be traced from the Upper Thames downstream through the Middle Thames Valley where they diverge from the modern course to pass into East Anglia where they form a terrace-like system, mostly buried beneath Anglian glaciation tills. This glaciation also overrode the Thames and its southbank tributaries north of London, resulting in the river adopting a new course through London. Subsequent evolution of the Thames system is marked by cyclic development of Maidenhead Formation gravel and sand aggradations under periglacial climates during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. The Thames terrace deposits also include interglacial fossiliferous sequences that provide both stratigraphical control and palaeoenvironmental evidence. East of London, the valley was invaded repeatedly by the sea so that, as today, a substantial estuary is developed during periods of high eustatic sea level (interglacials). In the estuary and upstream, a thick wedge of Holocene-age floodplain sediments have accumulated. Apart from the river deposits, slope and colluvial materials also occur, as well as periglacial materials, and the products of Chalk bedrock dissolution. Anthropogenic modification of the basin and especially the river’s course has been profound.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Allen P, Cheshire DA, Whiteman CA (1991) The tills of southern East Anglia. In: Ehlers J, Gibbard PL, Rose J (eds) Glacial deposits in great Britain and Ireland. Balkema, Rotterdam, pp 255–278
Antoine P, Lautridou JP, Laurent M (2000) Long-term fluvial archives in NW France: response of the Seine and Somme rivers to tectonic movements, climate variations and sea-level changes. Geomorphology 33:183–207
Balson PA (1990) The ‘Trimley Sands’: a former marine Neogene deposit from eastern England. Tertiary Res 11:145–158
Balson P (1999) The Neogene of eastern England. In: Daley B, Balson P (eds) British Tertiary stratigraphy. Geological Conservation Review series 15. Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Peterborough, pp 235–240
Barton N (1992) The Lost Rivers of London: A study of their effects upon London and Londoners and the effects of London and Londoners upon them, 3rd edn. Historical Publications, Newbury, Berkshire, p 168
Berry FG (1979) Late quaternary scour hollows and related features in central London. Quart J Eng Geol 12:9–29
Bridgland DR (1988) The Pleistocene fluvial stratigraphy and palaeogeography of Essex. Proc Geol Assoc 99:291–314
Bridgland DR (1994) The quaternary of the Thames. Chapman & Hall, London, p 441
Bridgland DR, Keen DH, Green CP, Bowen DQ, Sykes GA (1995) Last interglacial deposits at Folkestone, Kent. Proc Geol Assoc 106:183–193
Bridgland DR, Schreve DC, Allen P, Keen DH (2003) Key Middle Pleistocene localities of the Lower Thames: site conservation issues, recent research and report of a Geologists’ Association excursion, 8 July, 2000. Proc Geol Assoc 114:211–225
Bromehead CEN (1925) The geology of North London. Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain
Church M, Miles MJ (1982) Discussion: processes and mechanisms of river bank erosion. In: Hey RD, Bathurst JC, Thorne CR (eds) Gravel-bed rivers. Wiley, Chichester, pp 259–271
Collins PE, Fenwick IM, Keith-Lucas DM, Worsley P (1996) Late Devensian river and floodplain dynamics and related environmental change in northwest Europe, with particular reference to a site at Woolhampton, Berkshire, England. J Quat Sci 11:357–375
Devoy RJN (1979) Flandrian sea level changes and vegetation history of the Lower Thames estuary. Phil Trans Royal Soc London B285:355–407
Ellison RA, Woods MA, Allen DJ, Forster A, Pharaoh TC, King C (2004) Geology of London. Special Memoir for 1:50 000 Geological sheets 256 (North London), 257 (Romford), 270 (Dartford) (England and Wales). British Geological Survey, p 114 Environment Agency, 2010. Management of the London Basin Chalk Aquifer—Status Report, p 17
Funnell BM (1996) Plio-Pleistocene palaeogeography of the southern North Sea basin (3.75–0.60 Ma). Quat Sci Rev 15:391–405
Gibbard PL (1977) Pleistocene history of the Vale of St.Albans. Phil Trans Royal Soc London B 280:445–483
Gibbard PL (1979) Middle Pleistocene drainage in the Thames Valley. Geol Mag 116:35–44
Gibbard PL (1985) The Pleistocene history of the Middle Thames Valley. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 155
Gibbard PL (1988) The history of the great northwest European rivers during the last three million years. Phil Trans Royal Soc London B 318:559–602
Gibbard PL (1989) The Geomorphology of a part of the Middle Thames: forty years on. A reappraisal of the work of F. Kenneth Hare. Proc Geol Assoc 100:481–503
Gibbard PL (1994) Pleistocene history of the Lower Thames Valley. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 229
Gibbard PL (1995) The formation of the Strait of Dover. In: Preece RC (ed) Island Britain: a quaternary perspective, vol 96. Geological Society Special Publication, pp 15–26
Gibbard PL (1999) The Thames Valley, its tributary, valleys and their former courses. In: Bowen DQ (ed) A revised correlation of the Quaternary deposits in the British Isles. Geol Soc Spec Rep 23, pp 45–58
Gibbard PL, Hall AR (1982) Late Devensian river deposits in the Lower Colne Valley, West London, England. Proc Geol Assoc 93:291–299
Gibbard PL, Lewin J (2003) Drainage evolution of lowland Britain during the Tertiary. J Geol Soc 160:829–845
Gibbard PL, Lewin J (2009) River incision and terrace formation in the late Cenozoic of Europe. Tectonophysics 474:41–55
Gibbard PL, Lewin J (2016) Filling the North Sea Basin: Cenozoic sediment sources and river styles (André Dumont medallist lecture 2014). Geol Belgica 19:201–217
Gibbard PL, Whiteman CA, Bridgland DR (1988) A preliminary report on the stratigraphy of the lower Thames valley. Quat Newsl 56:1–8
Green CP, Branch NP, Coope GR, Field MH, Keen DH, Wells JM, Schwenninger J-L (2006) Marine Isotope Stage 9 environments of fluvial deposits at Hackney, north London, UK. Quat Sci Rev 25:89–113
Gupta S, Collier JS, Garcia-Moreno D, Oggioni F, Trentesaux A, Vanneste K, De Batist M, Camelbeeck T, Potter G, Van Vliet-Lanoë B, Arthur JC (2017) Two-stage opening of the Dover strait and the origin of island Britain. Nat Commun 8:15101
Hey R (1980) Equivalents of the Westland green gravels in essex and East Anglia. Proc Geol Assoc 91:279–290
Hull E, Whitaker W (1861) The geology of parts of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Mem Geol Surv Great Britain Sheet 13:57
Hutchinson JN (1980) Possible late Quaternary pingo remnants in central London. Nature 284:253–255
Jones DKC (1981) Southeast and southern England (The Geomorphology of the British Isles). Methuen, London, 332 pp
Jones DKC (1999a) Evolving models of the Tertiary evolutionary geomorphology of southern England, with special reference to the Chalklands. In: Smith BJ, Whalley WB, Warke PA (eds) Uplift, erosion and stability: perspectives on long-term landscape development, vol 162. Geologial Society of London, Special Publication, pp 1–23
Jones DKC (1999b) On the uplift and denudation of the Weald In: Smith BJ, Whalley WB, Warke PA (eds) Uplift, erosion and stability: perspectives on long-term landscape development, vol 162. Geological Society of London, Special Publication, pp 25–43
Leszczynska K, Boreham S, Gibbard P (2017) Middle Pleistocene ice-marginal sedimentation in the transitional zone between constrained and unconstrained ice-sheet margin, East Anglia, England. Boreas 46:697–724
Leszczynska K, Boreham S, Gibbard PL (2018) Middle Pleistocene ice-marginal sedimentation at a constrained ice sheet margin, East Anglia, UK. Boreas 47:1118–1143
Lewin J, Gibbard PL (2010) Quaternary river terraces in England: forms, sediments and processes. Geomorphology 120:293–311
Klinck BA, Hopson PM, Lewis MA, Macdonald DMJ, Inglethorpe SDJ, Entwisle DC, Harrington JF, Williams L (1998) The hydrogeological behaviour of the clay-with-flints in Southern England. Technical Report WE/97/5. British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham
McGregor DF, Green CP (1983) Post-depositional modification of Pleistocene terraces of the River Thames. Boreas 12:23–33
Mathers S, Zalasiewicz J (1988) The red Crag and Norwich Crag formations of southern East Anglia. Proc Geol Assoc 99:261–278
Mathers SJ, Zalasiewicz JA, Bloodworth AJ, Morton AC (1987) The Banham Beds: a petrologically distinct suite of Anglian glacigenic deposits from central East Anglia. Proc Geol Assoc 98:229–240
Murton JB (1996) Near-surface brecciation of Chalk, Isle of Thanet, South-East England: a comparison with ice-rich brecciated bedrocks in Canada and Spitsbergen. Permafrost Perigl Proc 7:153–164
Murton JB, Peterson R, Ozouf J-C (2006) Bedrock fracture by ice segregation in cold regions. Science 314:1127–1129
Murton JB, Belshaw RK (2011) A conceptual model of valley incision, planation and terrace formation during cold and arid permafrost conditions of Pleistocene southern England. Quat Res 75:385–394
Pawley SM, Bailey RM, Rose J, Moorlock BS, Hamblin RJ, Booth SJ, Lee JR (2008) Age limits on middle Pleistocene glacial sediments from OSL dating, north Norfolk, UK. Quat Sci Rev 27:1363–1377
Penkman KE, Preece RC, Bridgland DR, Keen DH, Meijer T, Parfitt SA, White TS, Collins MJ (2011) A chronological framework for the British Quaternary based on Bithynia opercula. Nature 476:446
Reid C (1887) On the origin of dry chalk valley and of Coombe Rock. Quart J Geol Soc 43:364–373
Rose J, Whiteman CA, Allen P, Kemp RA (1999) The Kesgrave sands and gravels: ‘pre-glacial’ Quaternary deposits of the River Thames in East Anglia and the Thames valley. Proc Geol Assoc 110:93–116
Royse KR, de Freitas M, Burgess WG, Cosgrove J, Ghail RC, Gibbard P, King C, Lawrence U, Mortimore RN, Owen H, Skipper J (2012) Geology of London, UK. Proc Geol Assoc 123:22–45
Sherlock RL (1947) London and Thames Valley, British Regional Geology, Geological Survey and Museum, 2nd edn. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, p 69
Terrington RL, Silva ÉC, Waters CN, Smith H, Thorpe S (2018) Quantifying anthropogenic modification of the shallow geosphere in central London, UK. Geomorphology 319:15–34
Toucanne S, Zaragosi S, Gibbard PL, Bourillet JF, Cremer M, Eynaud F, Turon JL, Cortijo E (2009) A 1.2 my record of glaciation and fluvial discharge from the West European continental margin. Quat Sci Rev 28:1238–1256
Van Huissteden K, Gibbard PL, Briant R (2001) Periglacial river activity in northern Europe during Marine Isotope Stages 4 and 3. Quat Int 79:75–88
Van Huissteden J, Vandenberghe J, Gibbard PL, Lewin J (2013) Periglacial fluvial sediments and forms. In: Elias SA (ed) The encyclopedia of quaternary science 3. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 490–499
Ward R (2003) London’s New River. Historical Publications Ltd, p 240
Watson E (1969) The slope deposits of the Nant Iago valley near Cader Idris, Wales. Biul Perygl 18:95–113
West RG (1972) Relative land-sea level changes in southeastern England during the Pleistocene. Phil Trans Royal Soc London A272:87–98
Whiteman CA, Rose J (1992) Thames river sediments of the British Early and middle pleistocene. Quat Sci Rev 11:363–375
Wooldridge SW, Linton DL (1939) Structure, surface and drainage in South-East England. Inst Brit Geogr Publ 10:124
Wooldridge SW, Linton DL (1955) Structure, surface and drainage in South-East England. Philip, London, p 176
Acknowledgements
I thank the editors for inviting me to write this summary and for their suggestions for its improvement. I am grateful to Philip Stickler (Department of Geography, University of Cambridge) for his skillful cartography.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gibbard, P.L. (2020). London Thames Basin. In: Goudie, A., Migoń, P. (eds) Landscapes and Landforms of England and Wales. World Geomorphological Landscapes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38957-4_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38957-4_19
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-38956-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-38957-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)