Hunnocky Moraine

 Hummocky Moraine


The picture is taken at Hayeswater, which is in the English Lake District (photo Andy Emery)

It shows a reasonable representation of Hummocky Moraine. The valley floor is not flat but has numerous hummocks or mounds of various knobbly shapes.

These hummocks are said to have been dropped by glaciers, and indeed they have, but not necessarily in the way that academia would have us believe. 

Having said that I can only account for the formation process for these features as they present themselves in Britain. Similar features may be found  in other post-glacial landscapes, and be formed in an entirely different way, a way for which i have no knowledge or understanding, yet.

Here in the Lake District the hummocky landscape is on a valley floor  and is likely to have been dumped there by a melting glacier.

The ice sheet sitting on the Lake District from 120,000 to 20,000 years ago may have been half a kilometre deep, (or more, or less!), but they were completely static. When the hills were superheated,  the edge of the ice sheet collapsed, either cuttingr deepening the valleys there.

This melt took place in about 11,000BP, (before present) and in the process sent meltwater, iceblocks, and sediments off to the nearest seashore. When the meltwater had drained there was nothing to propel iceblocks and sediments away from the valley, and a traditional solid "Glacier" was left  which was probably static. As the glacier was in the valley it was largely sheltered from the sun's heat, and it was not until 8,000BP or 9,000BP that the place was warm enough to melt the ice. 

As the ice melted, the glacier  dumped its' contents in tidy piles across the valley floor.

This melting was quite abundant   and caused sea level to rise around all of Britain's coastline, more in the north, around the mountains, less in the south, but the lowland of Britain must have remained awash with meltwater well into the Neolithic period.


Jeffery Nicholls 

Jiffynorm@yahoo.co.uk 


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