Geology Site Account

Site name: Bulls Lodge Gravel Quarry, Boreham

Grid reference: TL 746 108

Brief description of site:

Bulls Lodge Gravel Quarry is a working gravel quarry with exposures of Kesgrave (Thames) Sands and Gravels overlain by a thickness of boulder clay (till). Access to the quarry is only available with permission from the quarry operators.

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Details

Bulls Lodge Gravel Quarry is working the Kesgrave Sands and Gravels (Kesgrave Formation) which were laid down during the early Ice Age by the River Thames when it flowed through north Essex and Suffolk and out across what is now the southern North Sea to become a tributary of the Rhine.

A number of interesting erratic cobbles and boulders have been found in the gravels by members of the Essex Rock and Mineral Society and the Essex Field Club, including 'exotic' rocks from Cornwall and North Wales (see Lucy 1999).

Some of the gravel in this area is bleached white and has been called the 'Essex White Ballast' (Greensmith et al. 1973).

Above the Kesgrave Formation is a thickness of boulder clay, or till, which was laid down on top of these gravels about 450,000 years ago by an ice sheet during the Anglian glaciation, the most severe cold period of the whole of the Ice Age (Allen 1999).

Bulls Lodge Quarry, Boreham. Photo © G. Lucy