Ice Ages and Interglacial Periods: Throughout the past two and a half million years, Britain experienced several ice ages, which are long periods of extremely cold climate. In between these cold periods, shorter periods of warmer climate, known as interglacial periods, offered some respite. We are currently living in an interglacial period called the Holocene.
The Ice Age’s arrival in County Durham around 30,000 to 20,000 years ago saw the British-Irish Ice Sheet advance into County Durham. Scottish ice coalesced with regional ice from the Cheviots, Lake District and Pennines at this time. The ice moved from the north-west to the south-east initially. Then, towards the end of the ice age (called the Devensian), the ice started to flow from north to south along the Durham coast, extending down into Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk.
The last Ice leaves County Durham: The glacial till we see in Seaham’s landscape date back to the last ice age, probably deposited between 25,000 to 20,000 years ago. Approximately 19,500 years ago, the ice disappeared from County Durham based on dates form Seaham, however, some ice persisted in Scotland until around 16,000 years ago.
Below you can see a reconstruction of the dynamic behaviour of the British-Irish Ice Sheet from the Britice-Chrono project.
