The Fenland.—The continuity of the belts of Chalk and of the Middle and Upper Oolites in the Eastern Plain is broken by the shallow depression of the Wash and the Fenland. The Fenland comprises a strip of Norfolk, a considerable part of Cambridgeshire, and the Holland district of Lincoln. Formerly a great inlet with vague borders of lagoons and marshes, the Fenland has been reclaimed partly by natural processes, partly by engineering works patiently continued for centuries. The whole district is flat and low, for the most part within 15 ft. of sea-level; the seaward edge in many places is below the level of high tide, and is protected by dykes as in Holland, while straight canals and ditches carry the sluggish drainage from the land. The soil is composed for the most part of silt and peat. A few small elevations of gravel, or of underlying formations, rise above the level of 25 ft.; these were in former times islands, and now they form the sites of the infrequent villages. Boston and King’s Lynn are memorials of the maritime importance of the Wash in the days of small ships. The numerous ancient churches and the cathedrals of Ely and Peterborough bear witness to the share taken by religious communities in the reclamation and cultivation of the land.
The Weald.—The dissection of the great east and west anticline in the south-east of England has resulted in a remarkable piece of country, occupying the east of Hampshire and practically the whole of Sussex, Surrey and Kent, in which each geological stratum produces its own type of scenery, and exercises its own specific influence on every natural distribution. The sheet of Chalk shows its cut edges in the escarpments facing the centre of the Weald, and surrounding it in an oval ring, the eastern end of which is broken by the Strait of Dover, so that its completion must be sought in France. From the crest of the escarpment, all round on south, west and north, the dip-slope of the Chalk forms a gentle descent outwards, the escarpment a very steep slope inwards. The cut edges of the escarpment forming the Hog’s Back and North Downs on the north, and the South Downs on the south, meet the sea in the fine promontories of the South Foreland and Beachy Head. The Downs are almost without population, waterless and grass-covered, with patches of beech wood. Their only important towns are on the coast, e.g. Brighton, Eastbourne, Dover, Chatham, or in the gaps where rivers from the centre pierce the Chalk ring, as at Guildford, Rochester, Canterbury, Lewes and Arundel. Within the Chalk ring, and at the base of the steep escarpment, there is a low terrace of the Upper Greensand, seldom so much as a mile in width, but in most places crowded with villages scarcely more than a mile apart, and ranged like beads on a necklace. Within the Upper Greensand an equally narrow ring of Gault is exposed, its stiff clay forming level plains of grazing pasture, without villages, and with few farmhouses even; and from beneath it the successive beds of the Lower Greensand rise towards the centre, forming a wider belt, and reaching a considerable height before breaking off in a fine escarpment, the crest of which is in several points higher than the outer ring of Chalk. Leith Hill and Hindhead are parts of this edge in the west, where the exposure is widest. Several towns have originated in the gaps of the Lower Greensand escarpment which are continuous with those through the Chalk: such are Dorking, Reigate, Maidstone and Ashford. Folkestone and Pevensey stand where the two ends of the broken ring meet the sea. It is largely a region of oak and pine trees, in contrast to the beech of the Chalk Downs. The Lower Greensand escarpment looks inwards in its turn over the wide plain of Weald Clay, along which the Medway flows in the north, and which forms a fertile soil, well cultivated, and particularly rich in hops and wheat. The primitive forests have been largely cleared, the primitive marshes have all been drained, and now the Weald Clay district is fairly well peopled and sprinkled with villages. From the middle of this plain the core of Lower Cretaceous sandstones known as the Hastings Beds emerges steeply, and reaches in the centre an elevation of 796 ft. at Crowborough Beacon. It is on the whole a region with few streams, and a considerable portion of the ancient woodland still remains in Ashdown Forest. The greater part of the Forest Ridges is almost without inhabitants. Towns are found only round the edge bordering the Weald Clay, such as Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and Horsham; and along the line where it is cut off by the sea, e.g. Hastings and St Leonards. The broad low tongue of Romney Marsh running out to Dungeness is a product of shore-building by the Channel tides, attached to the Wealden area, but not essentially part of it.
The London Basin.—The London Basin occupies a triangular depression in the Chalk which is filled up with clays and gravels of Tertiary and later age. It extends from the eastern extremity of Wiltshire in a widening triangle to the sea, which it meets along an irregular line from Deal to Cromer. It thus occupies parts of Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Kent, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, the whole of Middlesex, the county of London and Essex, and the eastern edge of Suffolk and Norfolk. The scenery is quiet in its character, but the gravel hills are often prominent features, as at Harrow and in the northern suburbs of London; the country is now mainly under grass or occupied with market and nursery gardens, and many parts, of which Epping Forest is a fine example, are still densely wooded, the oak being the prevailing tree. The coast is everywhere low and deeply indented by ragged and shallow estuaries, that of the Thames being the largest. Shallow lagoons formed along the lower courses of the rivers of Norfolk have given to that part of the country the name of the Broads, a district of low and nearly level land. Apart from the huge area of urban and suburban London, the London Basin has few large towns. Norwich and Ipswich, Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Harwich and Colchester may be mentioned in the north-eastern part, all depending for their prosperity on agriculture or on the sea; and a fringe of summer resorts on the low coast has arisen on account of the bracing climate. Reading and Windsor lie in the western portion, beyond the suburban sphere of London. The Bagshot Beds in the west form infertile tracts of sandy soil, covered with heath and pine, where space is available for the great camps and military training-grounds round Aldershot, and for the extensive cemeteries at Woking. The London Clay in the east is more fertile and crowded with villages, while the East Anglian portion of the basin consists of the more recent Pliocene sands and gravels, which mix with the boulder clay to form the best wheat-growing soil in the country.
The Hampshire Basin.—The Hampshire Basin forms a triangle with Dorchester, Salisbury and Worthing near the angles, and the rim of Chalk to the south appears in broken fragments in the Isle of Purbeck, the Isle of Wight, and to the east of Bognor. On the infertile Bagshot Beds the large area of the New Forest remains untilled under its ancient oaks. The London Clay of the east is more fertile, but the greatness of this district lies in its coast-line, which is deeply indented, like that of the London Basin. Southampton and Portsmouth have gained importance through their fine natural harbours, improved by engineering works and fortifications; Bournemouth and Bognor, from their favourable position in the sunniest belt of the country, as health resorts.
Communications.—The configuration of England, while sufficiently pronounced to allow of the division of the country into natural regions, is not strongly enough marked to exercise any very great influence upon lines of communication. The navigable rivers are all connected by barge-canals, even across the Pennine Chain. Although the waterways are much neglected, compared with those of France or of Germany, they might still be very useful if they were enlarged and improved and if free competition with railways could be secured. The main roads laid out as arteries of intercommunication by the Romans, suffered to fall into neglect, and revived in the coaching days of the beginning of the 19th century, fell into a second period of comparative neglect when the railway system was completed; but they have recovered a very large share of their old importance in consequence of the development of motor-traffic. Following the Roman roads, the high roads of the Eastern Division very frequently run along the crests of ridges or escarpments; but in the Western Division they are, as a rule, forced by the more commanding relief of the country to keep to the river valleys and cross the rougher districts through the dales and passes. The railways themselves, radiating from the great centres of population, and especially from London, are only in a few instances much affected by configuration. The Pennine Chain has always separated the traffic from south to north into an east coast route through the Vale of York, and a west coast route by the Lancashire plain. The Midland railway, running through the high and rugged country between the two, was the last to be constructed. The most notable bridges over navigable water affording continuous routes are those across Menai Strait, the Tyne at Newcastle, the Severn at Severn Bridge and the Manchester Ship Canal. It is more usual to tunnel under such channels, and the numerous Thames tunnels, the Mersey tunnel between Liverpool and Birkenhead, and the Severn tunnel, the longest in the British Islands (4½ m.), on the routes from London to South Wales, and from Bristol to the north of England, are all important. The Humber estuary is neither bridged nor tunnelled below Goole.
Density of Population.—The present distribution of population over England and Wales shows a dense concentration at all large seaports, in the neighbourhood of London, and on the coal-fields where manufactures are carried on. Agricultural areas are very thinly peopled; purely pastoral districts can hardly be said to have any settled population at all. There are very few dwellings situated at a higher level than 1000 ft., and on the lower ground the Chalk and the Oolitic limestones, where they crop out on the surface, are extremely thinly peopled, and so as a rule are areas of alluvial deposits and the Tertiary sands. But, on the other hand, the broad clay plains of all formations, the Cretaceous sandstones, and the Triassic plain, are peopled more densely than any other district without mineral wealth or sea trade.
Political Divisions.—In the partition of England and Wales into counties, physical features play but a small part. The forty ancient counties, remnants of various historical groupings and partings, are occasionally bounded by rivers. Thus the Thames divides counties along nearly its whole length, forming the southern boundary of four and the northern boundary of three. Essex and Suffolk, Suffolk and Norfolk, Cornwall and Devon, Durham and Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, are all separated by rivers, while rivers form some part of the boundaries of almost every county. Still, it is noteworthy that the Severn and Trent nowhere form continuous county boundaries. Watersheds are rarely used as boundaries for any distance; but, although slightly overlapping the watershed on all sides, Yorkshire is very nearly coincident with the basin of the Ouse. The boundaries of the parishes, the fundamental units of English political geography, are very often either rivers or watersheds, and they frequently show a close relation to the strike of the geological strata. The hundreds, or groups of parishes, necessarily share their boundaries, and groups of hundreds are often aggregated to form larger subdivisions of counties. A wider grouping according to natural characteristics may now be recognized only in the cases of Wales, East Anglia, Wessex and such less definite groups as the Home Counties around London or the Midlands around Birmingham. Configuration is only one out of many conditions modifying distributions, and its effects on England as a whole appear to be suggestive rather than determinative.
(H. R. M.)
III. Geology
For an area so small, England is peculiarly rich in geological interest. This is due in some degree to the energy of the early British geologists, whose work profoundly influenced all subsequent thought in the science, as may be seen by the general acceptation of so many of the English stratigraphical terms; but the natural conditions were such as to call forth and to stimulate this energy in an unusual way. Almost every one of the principal geological formations may be studied in England with comparative ease.