Unable to resist a challenge I drew this map of Cromer. None of it is to scale; parts of it are rearranged in different places; and large portions probably aren’t real, but you get the idea.
It’s hard to think of much that’s scientific about Cromer except that just to the west, along the coast, at West Runton, is the Upper Freshwater Bed, the type section of the Cromer Forest-bed Formation (CFbF) of the Cromerian Stage of the European Middle Pleistocene. This is a rich sauce source of fossil plants and fossil vertebrates, most notably an elephant, possibly the largest known specimen of Mammuthus trogontherii from anywhere in the world.
Mammuthus trogontherii, last week (imposter).
This being Norfolk, plans to display this prize example of local heritage have been delayed indefinitely by nimbyist bungaloid curtain twitchers bureaucracy and lack of funds, so parts of the creature are tucked away all over the county. Some are to be found at Cromer Museum
The Burghers of Cromer perform an impromptu Morris-Dance to celebrate the opening of the town museum, yesterday
but most is in storage at a folklore and farming museum at Gressenhall.
The age of the CFbF is much in dispute. Estimates range from 11 billion years to a year ago last Thursday fortnight, but most dates cluster in the 600,000- to 700,000-year range, downhill, and with a following wind.
Way out east along the coast, parts of the CFbF are exposed at Pakefield near Lowestoft, whose stone tools represent the earliest known human occupation of Britain. Human beings came to Cromer almost three quarters of a million years ago …
... and bugger all has happened since.
I wonder what the good people of Norfolk would make of this, then?
They’d say: “That’s a funny-lookin’ turkey”.
Lovely map, by the way. I didn’t know you lived so far from Norwich ;-) Maybe the Nature office should be a speck on the horizon.
It isn’t as far as that, really – that distance is more psychological than actual. It’s worth noting that the geography changes very quickly round here—this is the most rapidly eroding coastline in Europe. When I announced I was moving to Cromer, someone said “Cromer – that’s about 30 miles from Norwich, isn’t it?” “20 miles,” I replied, “there’s been a lot of erosion lately.”
Cromer doesn’t appear in the Domesday Book – instead there is a village called Shipden. That’s now sunk beneath the waves. At that time, Cromer was a muddy puddle somewhere inland, popular with crows, and known as ‘Crow Mere’.
Local legend has it that on stormy nights you can hear the bells of Shipden church. Here at the Maison Des Girrafes we’ve elaborated the myth to say that Shipden Church had three bells – one of bronze, one of brass, and one of yoghurt. When they rang the changes they went “ding, dong, splat”.
My geography is weak but I did know that (about Norwich) I hasten to add.
One blog I follow is called “Musings from a Muddy Island”, which comes from Mersea, England’s (Britain’s) most easterly island.