Stations below sea level

[Hroth]

On 26/03/2020 at 15:46, The Johnster said:

... Mersey Tunnels should be excluded as should some Mersey Railway stations which effectively come under the 'underground railway' heading

 

However the new(ish) Conway Park station in Birkenhead between Park and Hamilton Square is in an opened out section of tunnel (Look up and see the sky!) and is probably below sea level. But you'd only get sea in it if the tunnel under the Mersey was breached!

 

 

[The Lurker]

On ‎27‎/‎03‎/‎2020 at 17:58, The Johnster said:

(Revolting pedant hat on) The Romney Marshes are not reclaimed from the sea, they are the result of longshore drift building up sequences of shingle banks, the latest of which is the current shoreline, a natural process.  New Romney may be close to mean sea level, though; it is in a cutting, quite a deep one south of the Littlestone Road bridge.

I agree about longshore drift but there is also evidence of considerable reclamation work from the 13th century onwards; the marsh has numerous drainage channels that regulate the flow off the marsh and allowed to be reclaimed for farming.

[The Johnster]

I still maintain the Romney Marsh was not reclaimed from the sea, at least not by humans or in medieval times; a marsh had already developed naturally behind the shingle banks and was then reclaimed for farming use, but reclaimed from the marsh not the sea.   Meanwhile further shingle banks pushed the shoreline out beyond Rye harbour until the deep water channel they encountered at Dungeness which made it such a good beach fishing spot for my brother-in-law prevented an attempt by natural forces to build a land bridge to France.  I  would agree if you were to criticise this assertion as mere semantics!  It is rational IMHO to regard the Royal Military Canal as the inland delineation of the Marsh, but I doubt if it represents any pre-Medieval coastline.  It also plays a part in water level management, with many of the inland drainage channels feeding it and a branch to dispose of excess water at St Botolph's.

 

That the sea did not ever come as far in as the current rise in land level inland of the RMC at any time more recently than the Tertiary geological period is shown by the lack of coastal erosion features such as cliffs and bays.  There must have been a low lying coast here since before the Ice Age, though with sea levels lower and a land bridge to the continental mainland still in place until about 6kya, it might well have been a few miles further out from it's current location rather than inland of it.  Sea level rise normally inundates land, but here it has created it.

 

My aforementioned brother-in-law and sister lived in New Romney 1963-5 during the building of Dungeness power station, and I stayed with them several times.  He was a local lad, actually from Aylesford, but knowledgeable about the history of the Marsh and of course a Dr Syn fan!  It was from him that I first heard the story of the FW 190 brought down by the exploding boiler of the loco it had strafed on the New Romney Branch.