Bytham River

The Bytham River was one of the great Pleistocene rivers of central and eastern England until it was destroyed by the advancing ice sheets of the Anglian Glaciation around 450,000 years ago. It is named after Castle Bytham in Lincolnshire. Its catchment area included Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Derbyshire, and it flowed eastward across East Anglia to the North Sea.[1][2][3]

It was formed prior to the Anglian ice advance some 450,000 years ago, commencing around modern day Reading and flowing north-east to a delta somewhere between modern day Happisburgh (pronounced Haysborough) and Norton Subcourse in East Anglia. At that time, southern England was joined to France in a land bridge, and the rivers, including the Rhine, flowed north into a lake formed at the edge of the ice sheet.

"As the Bytham River slowed past Warren Hill (near modern day Kettering) towards its delta on what is now the East Anglian coast, it deposited sediments on the edge of the huge north-facing bay, into which the Rhine also flowed. The sites of Norton Subcourse in Norfolk and nearby Pakefield, just over the border in Suffolk, were probably both related to the Bytham, and they record a time when the climate of Britain was balmy and Mediterranean, and this part of East Anglia was a fertile estuarine plain."[4]

References
  1. Ashton, Nick (2017). Early Humans. London: William Collins. p. 82. ISBN 978-0-00-815035-8.
  2. Rose, J (2007). Palaeogeography of Eastern England during the Early Middle Pleistocene. In: Candy, I, Lee, JR & Harrison, AM (eds). The Quaternary of Northern East Anglia Field Guide. Quaternary Research Association (2007)
  3. Rose, J, Candy, I, Moorlock, BSP & Morigi, AN (2002). Early and early Middle Pleistocene river, coastal and neotectonic processes, southeast Norfolk, England. Proceedings of the Geologist's Association, vol.113, pp.47-67
  4. Stringer, Chris (2006). Homo Brittannicus, the incredible story of human life in Britain. Great Britain: Penguin Books. p. 45. ISBN 9780141018133.

Further reading
  • Gibbard, P.L., Pasanen, A., West, R. G., Lunkka, J.P., Boreham, S., Cohen, K. M. & Rolfe, C. 2009 Late Middle Pleistocene glaciation in eastern England. Boreas 38, 504–528.
  • Rice, R.J. 1981 The Pleistocene deposits of the area around Croft in south Leicestershire. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B293, 385-418.
  • Shotton, F.W. 1953 The Pleistocene deposits of the area between Coventry, Rugby and Leamington, and their bearing on the topographic development of the Midlands. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B237, 209-260.


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