TOPOGRAPHY OF BLAKENEY POINT. 3 



leeward, numerous salt marshes have accreted, whilst towards 

 its extremity where the sea shallows off the headland from 

 the accumulation of vast quantities of sand much of the latter 

 has been blown from the strand to form systems of sand dunes, 

 which rest upon and mask the shingle. 



Blakeney Point is thus an aggregate of shingle beaches, 

 sand dunes, and salt marshes, all the materials of which have 

 been derived from and sorted out by the sea. It is no doubt 

 the re-incorporated residuum of an old land area, but whether 

 this was formerly a seaward extension of the existing coast, or 

 whether under very different conditions the materials were 

 eroded from inland by the River Glaven of those days, are 

 questions outside the province of the present article. In many 

 similar formations of this kind, existing sources of supply from 

 the present waste of cliffs seem inadequate to account for such 

 vast accumulations of shingle as, for instance, in the case of 

 the Chesil Bank, in Dorset and it is quite possible the same 

 may be true of Blakeney Point. 



Of this structure the terminal three and a-half miles form 

 the National Trust Reserve, i.e., the whole of that represented 

 in Fig. 1, together with an additional half-mile to the East ; 

 the Trust also possess the strip of saltings abutting on the 

 reclaimed marshes between Blakeney and Cley. All in all, 

 the Reserve is a self-contained area of outstanding interest 

 physically, botanically, and as a haunt of birds. 



The great peculiarity of the Blakeney spit is the high degree 

 of complexity it has attained from repeated branching, a 

 feature wherein it occupies a class by itself among similar 

 formations in the British Isles. 



If the spit be followed from its point of departure at 

 Weybourne to its extremity beyond Blakeney, it will be found 

 to consist of a straight, unbranched shingle beach for the first 

 five miles (i.e., up to the right-hand edge of the map, Fig. l) 

 a toilsome causeway, about 400 feet in width, sloping from the 

 crest at a very gentle angle to the marshes on its lee flank, 

 more steeply on the sea face. The crest, though it stands 

 fully six feet above the level of spring tide high-water mark, is 



