Everything about Thames Estuary totally explained
The Estuary
The
Thames Estuary is where the
River Thames meets the waters of the
North Sea. It isn't easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of ‘’Sea Reach‘’, near
Canvey Island on the
Essex shore is probably the western boundary. The eastern boundary, as suggested in a Hydrological Survey of 1882-9, is a line drawn from
North Foreland in
Kent via the
Kentish Knock lighthouse to
Harwich in Essex. It is to here that the typical estuarine sandbanks extend . The estuary has the world's second largest tidal movement, where the water can rise by 4 metres moving at a speed of 8 miles per hour.
The estuary is one of the largest of 170 such inlets on the
coast of
Great Britain. It constitutes a major
shipping route, with thousands of movements each year including large
oil tankers,
container ships,
bulk carriers and
roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ferries entering the estuary for the
Port of London and the
Medway Ports of
Sheerness,
Chatham and
Thamesport.
The
Thames sailing barge worked in this area, designed to be suitable for the shallow waters in the smaller ports. One of the largest
wind farms in the UK has been developed in the estuary, located 8.5km north of
Herne Bay. The farm contains 30 wind turbines generating a total of 82.4MW of electricity. The much larger
London Array of up to 1GW capacity is also planned.
The Greater Thames Estuary
The appellation
Greater Thames Estuary applies to the coast and the low-lying lands bordering the estuary itself. These are characterised by the presence of salt marshes, mudflats and open beaches: in particular the
North Kent Marshes and the Essex Marshes. Rising sea levels in places may make it necessary to flood some of that land to take the pressure off the defences. Man-made embankments are backed by reclaimed wetland grazing areas; there are many smaller estuaries, including the
Rivers Colne,
Blackwater and
Crouch; and there are small villages concerned with a coastal economy (fishing, boat-building, and yachting) . The
Isle of Sheppey,
Foulness Island and
Mersea Island are part of the coastline
Where higher land reaches the coast there are some larger settlements, such as
Clacton-on-Sea (to the north in Essex),
Herne Bay in Kent, and the
Southend-on-Sea area within the narrower part of the estuary
The Thames Estuary is part of
Thames Gateway, designated as one of the principal development areas in Southern England.
This area has had several proposed sites for the building of a new airport to supplement, or even to replace
Heathrow. In the 1960s
Maplin Sands was a contender; in 2002 it was to be at
Cliffe, Kent. The new airport would be built on a man-made island in the estuary north of
Minster-in-Sheppey
There is also some discussion about the need for a
Lower Thames Crossing in order to alleviate traffic congestion at Dartford.
Other notes
Joseph Conrad's (1906) contains a memorable description of the area as seen from the Thames.
The form of speech of many of the people of the area, principally the accents of those from Kent and Essex, is often known as
Estuary English.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Thames Estuary'.
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