The Fylde & Wyre Antiquarian

The sandbanks above Fleetwood are an incredible mixture of colours and textures, which I would have imagined to be all washed together by the currents and tides, but as you see, they are not.

Brian,
You're free to use any photos I post, there's no copyright, though I must credit my collegue Eric Rigg who took the shots on the 10th of March, and realise how lucky we were to be airborne in those perfect conditions for Bourne Hill.

Am I right in assuming those sandbanks were once dry land and the rising sea levels have done their bit?
Would the different colours of the sand be indicative of mineral deposits or detritus from former habitation sites?

Fantastic photos again, Frank.

The Fleetwood Peninsula and the Fylde Coast in general (apart from cliffs at Blackpool) is only a few feet above normal sea level and has been subject to floods in recorded history and there is geological evidence of earlier 'marine incursions' (I think is the term). But there is supposed to be a submerged forest off Cleveleys isn't there? So that suggests that sea levels were maybe a few feet lower at some points in prehistory. Further down the coast at Formby Point there are river silt mud flats that lie under the sand banks about 100+m from the dunes. The tides expose these and you can see animal (e.g. extinct aurochs) and human footprints in the mud. http://www.seftoncoast.org.uk/hist_footprints.html

They only last till the next tide washes them away but it shows that areas under the sea were once at least more accessible. Whether they were sufficiently above sea level to allow permanent occupation is as Brian says debatable.

Some of my pics:

Animal track maybe deer



Adult human - bootprint is mine I think


Maybe a child or two


Close up of hooved (unshod) animal maybe aurochs- about 4 inches across


General Location Offshore

The child's prints were a puzzle 'cos it's only a left foot. This was on th eedge of the deposit so maybe the right foot had washed away ... or maybe (s)he was hopping?

Ahh, I didn't realise there was a dispute about it, sorry.
I only ask because both Indigenous folklore and science has proven that our shoreline extended much further out into Port Phillip Bay where the Aboriginal People would walk far out to collect foods in rock-pools, fishing, swimming, etc, and that our main river (Yarra River) was a great deal longer, creating a channel that is still detectable today despite it being far under sea water.

Ha, ha! Perhaps she was doing the 'Sole (leg) Limbo'. Apols to Booker T & The MGs.

Before the Ice Caps began to melt (we're still coming out of the last glaciation) sea water was frozen up so there was much more dry land or marginal land where the early people could hunt animals or take shellfish etc. There are certainly submerged forests on the West coast - Cardigan Bay I think is another area - and in the East trawlers have dredged up mammoth and other extinct animals' bones and stone tools from the Dogger Bank area of the North Sea (called Dogger Land). I'd imagine this applied to Southern Hemisphere too.

It's really weird to see these footprints disappear under later deposits and to realise that this is the first time they've been visible for maybe 6000 years. But sea levels were lower even a few hundred years ago.

I seem to recall there was a Timeteam Special about the area that is now below the North Sea. Yes, a quick visit to channel4.com gets us http://www.channel4.com/history/microsi ... ogger.html.

Jayne wrote-

and Brian wrote-


Although way back to Thornber, the consensus was, Portus or some Roman remains were out beond Fleetwood, and have been covered by the sea since they were built, modern research suggests that the sea level was considerably higher two thousand years ago. I myself was of the same opinion when I became engrossed in the Romans and Portus, when I saw the evidence of Kirkham possibly being a port, with the Dowbrook, appearing once to be navigable right up to the base of Carr Hill.





Because of this sea level change, ‘academia’ dismisses Portus beyond Fleetwood as a non starter, but I believe both theories can be equally relevant.

Dave wrote-


We know that during the last 150 to 200 years, quite a fair amount of erosion has taken place on the Fylde coast, Gin Square falling into the sea etc, so the Fylde will have been a totally different shape 2000 years ago, but I don’t think the remains of trees off the shore necessarily means the land was low. Imagine a area of woodland near the coast where the sea is encroaching. Eventually the trees are on the edge of cliffs, 50 to 100 feet high maybe. When the sea smashes those cliffs down some of those trees will be trapped or buried by the rubble of the cliffs and remain there where they grew, but at a different (lower) level. So, who knows, there may well have been a Roman port above Fleetwood, or Singleton or Waddum Thorpe. We may never know for certain.

Similar to Dunwich being crumbled from the cliffs and swept away by the North Sea, Frank ?

(Just read an interesting article about a chap who's found most of the archaeological remains of Dunwich are still within spitting distance of the original site, albeit under water).