Loess in Britain XV: Essex

Warren, S.H.  1942.  The drifts of south-western Essex.  Essex Naturalist 27 (part 5, Ap-Sept 1942) 155-163;  27 (part 6, Oct 1942- Nov 1943)  171-179.

"Hallsford-  I call the exposures here my key sections to unlock certain of the secrets of the local geology" [Zeuner's Hallsford loess must be here].

"The other pit is that of the Hallsford Brick & Tile works (E.of High Ongar Road)...  about 3/4 mile SE of Chipping Ongar.  Deposits in fig.1 are:  1. Rainwash, of the Iron Age, up to about 4 ft.  2. Loess, probably of Aurignacian age, up to 8 ft.  3.  a buried land surface..  4. Chalky Jurassic Boulder clay..  5. glacial sands.  6. pebble gravel..  7.  London clay."

"The Hallsford loess- although this is only a small local deposit-  it is one of exceptional interest which Dr. Zeuner has analyses;  he finds it to be a true wind-borne loess (a steppe deposit) of continental type, which was formerly thought to be absent from this country."

Gruhn, R., Bryan, A.L., Moss, A.J.  1974.  A contribution to Pleistocene chronology in south-east Essex, England.  Quaternary Research 4, 53-75


Eden, D.N.  1980.  The loess of North-East Essex, England.  Boreas 9, 165-177.

A thin mantle of cover-loam over much of north-east Essex has been recognised as consisting of loess.  The cover-loam represents the intermixing, to a varying degree, of a layer of loessial silt with a thin layer of underlying sand which is also of likely aeolian origin. The heavy mineral content of the coarse silt fraction of north-east Essex loess is generally similar to that of the last glaciation age loesses elsewhere in eastern England, Belgium and the Netherlands.  This suggests the north-east Essex loess is part of a single loess sheet deposited over Eastern England and parts of western Europe. Nevertheless

...  detailed examination of the heavy minerals content from all of these areas reveals slight areal variations especially in the proportion of hornblende. These differences show the coarse silt from NE Essex loess to have closest affinities with that from Norfolk. A distant source for the loess within the present North Sea basin is proposed on textural evidence. Loess accumulation in NE Essex probably commenced in the few thousand years leading up to the maximum extent of Devensian ice (about 18,000 BP) and may have continued to about 14,000 BP.