of the Isle of Wight shows a succession of splendid cliffs. The shallow inlet of Poole Bay is followed by the eminence of St Alban’s Head, and thereafter, right round the south-western promontory of England, the cliff-bound coast, with its bays and inlets closely beset with hills, predominates over the low shore-line, exhibits a remarkable series of different forms, and provides the finest scenery of its kind in England. The shores of the Severn estuary are low, but the Welsh coast, sharing the general character of the land, is more or less elevated throughout, though none of the higher mountain-masses directly approaches the sea. Low shores correspond to the plains of Cheshire, Lancashire and the Solway, while the intervening coast is of no great elevation, as only the foothills of the Lake District approach it with a gradual slope.
A great extent of the English coast is constantly undergoing visible alteration, the sea in some instances receding from the land, and in others gaining upon it. The whole of Romney Marsh, in Kent and Sussex, formerly constituted an arm of the sea, where vessels rode in deep water, carrying produce to ports no longer in existence. Lydd and Romney, though maritime still in name, retaining some of the ancient privileges of the Cinque Ports, have become, through changes in the coast-line, small inland towns; and the same has been the fate of Rye, Winchelsea, and other places in that district. Again, the Isle of Thanet, in the north-eastern corner of Kent, has practically ceased to be an island. The wide estuary of the sea separating it from the mainland, through which ships sailed from the English Channel into the Thames, using it as the shortest route from the south to London, has entirely disappeared, leaving only a flat lowland traversed by branches of the river Stour to mark its former existence. The sea is encroaching over a considerable extent of coast-line on the North Sea as well as on the English Channel. Ravenspur, once an important town of Yorkshire, where Bolingbroke, afterwards Henry IV., landed in 1399, is now submerged; and Dunwich and other ancient ports in East Anglia have met with the same fate. The process of destruction, slow in some places, is so rapid in others that it can be traced even from month to month—the incessant work of the waves washing away the soft strata at the base of the cliffs and leaving the summits unsupported. Many cliffs of the east coast, from the Humber to the mouth of the Thames, are suffering from this destructive action, and instances also occur on the south coast. A royal commission on Coast Erosion was appointed to inquire into this question in 1906 (see Report, 1907 sqq.).
Except along the centre of the Irish Sea, at one point off the Tweed and one between Devon and Normandy, the depth of water between England and the nearest land nowhere exceeds 50 fathoms.
Rivers.—The variations in length of the general slope of the land towards successive natural divisions of the coast may be illustrated by a comparative table of the mileage and drainage areas of the principal English rivers. The mileage does not take account of the lesser sinuosities of rivers.
| Rivers. | Length Miles. |
Drainage Area sq. m. |
| 1. North-east— | ||
| Tweed[1] | 97 | 1870 |
| Tyne | 80 | 1130 |
| Wear | 60 | 458 |
| Tees | 85 | 708 |
| 2. East— | ||
| Humber system[2] | 9293 | |
| Witham | 80 | 1079 |
| Welland | 70 | 760 |
| Nene | 90 | 1077 |
| Ouse (Great) | 160 | 2607 |
| Yare | 60 | 880 |
| Stour (Suffolk-Essex) | 60 | 407 |
| Thames[3] | 209 | 5924 |
| 3. South— | ||
| Stour (Kent) | 40 | 370 |
| Rother | 32 | 312 |
| Arun | 43 | 370 |
| Avon (Hampshire) | 60 | 1132 |
| Exe | 55 | 584 |
| Tamar | 58 | 384 |
| 4. Bristol Channel (south-west)— | ||
| Torridge | 45 | 336 |
| Taw | 43 | 455 |
| Parrett | 37 | 562 |
| Severn[4][5] | 210 | 6850 |
| Usk[5] | 70 | 540 |
| 5. North-west— | ||
| (a) Cheshire-Lancashire— | ||
| Dee[5] | 70 | 813 |
| Mersey[6] | 70 | 1596 |
| Ribble | 65 | 585 |
| (b) Solway— | ||
| Eden | 70 | 1300 |
With the exception of those in the Lake District (q.v.) the lakes of England are few and insignificant. A number of small meres occur in a defined area in Cheshire. (O. J. R. H.)
II. Physical Geography
The object of this section is to give a physical description of England and Wales according to natural regions, which usually follow the geology of the country very closely; although the relationship of configuration and geology is not so simple or so clearly marked as in Scotland.
The land is highest in the west and north, where the rocks also are oldest, most disturbed, and hardest, and the land surface gradually sinks towards the east and south, where the rocks become successively less disturbed, more recent, and softer. The study of the scenery of England and Wales as a whole, or the study of orographical and geological maps of the country, allows a broad distinction to be drawn between the types of land-forms in the west and in the east. This distinction is essential, and applies to all the conditions of which geography takes account. The contrasted districts are separated by an intermediate area, which softens the transition between them, and may be described separately.
The Western Division is composed entirely of Archaean and Palaeozoic rocks, embracing the whole range from pre-Cambrian up to Carboniferous. The outcrops of these rocks succeed each other in order of age in roughly concentric belts, with the Archaean mass of the island of Anglesey as a centre, but the arrangement in detail is much disturbed and often very irregular. Contemporary igneous outbursts are extremely common in some of the ancient formations, and add, by their resistance to atmospheric erosion, to the extreme ruggedness of the scenery. The hills and uplands of ancient rocks do not form regular ranges, but rise like islands in four distinct groups from a plain of New Red Sandstone (Permian and Triassic), which separates them from each other and from the newer rocks of the Eastern Division. Each of the uplands is a centre for the dispersal of streams; but with only one prominent exception (the Humber) these reach the sea without crossing into the Eastern Division of the country.
The Eastern Division, lying to the east of the zone of New Red Sandstone, may be defined on the west by a slightly curved line drawn from the estuary of the Tees through Leicester and Stratford-on-Avon to the estuary of the Severn, and thence through Glastonbury to Sidmouth. It is built up of nearly uniform sheets of Mesozoic rock, the various beds of the Jurassic lying above the New Red Sandstone (Triassic), and dipping south-eastward under the successive beds of the Cretaceous system. In exactly the same way the whole of the south-east of the island appears to have been covered uniformly with gently
- ↑ Partly belonging to Scotland.
- ↑ The principal members of the Humber-system are the Ouse of Yorkshire (121 m. long from the source of the Swale or Ure) and the Trent (170 m.), qq.v. for their numerous important tributaries.
- ↑ Including the Medway (680 sq. m.) in the drainage area.
- ↑ Including the Wye (1609 sq. m.) and the Lower Avon (891 sq. m.) in the drainage area.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 These rivers have their earlier courses in Wales, and flow at first to some point of east. Of wholly Welsh rivers only the Towy and the Teifi are comparable in length and drainage area with the smaller rivers in the above list (see Wales).
- ↑ From the source of its headstream the Goyt.
