Hillcollins Pit or Furneux Pelham Gravel Pit is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest near

Furneux Pelham Furneux Pelham or Furneaux Pelham is a village and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The village is one of the Pelhams, part of an early medieval larger swathe of land known as Pelham including Brent Pelham to the north and Stocking Pel ...

in Hertfordshire. The local planning authority is

East Hertfordshire District Council East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...

. it was identified as a site of national importance in the

Geological Conservation Review The Geological Conservation Review (GCR) is produced by the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee and is designed to identify those sites of national and international importance needed to show all the key scientific elements of the geological ...

in 1988. This is a disused gravel pit which exposes the Westland Green Gravels, which were laid down by the ancestral

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

1.6 to 1.8 million years ago. At this time the Thames flowed from

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

through the

Goring Gap The Goring Gap is the narrow valley, occupied by the River Thames, between the Chiltern Hills and the Berkshire Downs. It is approximately upstream of Reading and downstream of Oxford. The river here delimits Berkshire from Oxfordshire. The vi ...

to Norwich, and the Gravels show the ancient course of the river. As the original site where the Gravels were identified is now completely degraded, Hillcollins Pit is now considered the

type site In archaeology, a type site is the site used to define a particular archaeological culture or other typological unit, which is often named after it. For example, discoveries at La Tène and Hallstatt led scholars to divide the European Iron A ...

for the Westland Green Gravels, and is of considerable importance in reconstructing the evolution of the geography of southern Britain. There is access to the site from a track between Furneux Pelham and Gravesend.

References

Further reading