Thames Estuary

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Thames Estuary

The Thames Estuary
Estuary

An estuary is a semi-enclosed coastal body of water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea....
is the area in which the River Thames

River Thames

The Thames is a major river flowing through southern England. While best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows through several other towns and cities, including Oxford, Reading, Berkshire and Windsor, Berkshire....
meets the waters of the North Sea

North Sea

The North Sea is a marginal sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf. The Dover Strait and the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north connect it to the Atlantic Ocean....
.

It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary , although physically the head of ‘’Sea Reach‘’, near Canvey Island

Canvey Island

Canvey Island is a civil parish and reclaimed island in the Thames estuary separated from the mainland of south Essex by a network of creeks. Lying below sea level it is prone to flooding at exceptional tides, but has nevertheless been inhabited since the Roman invasion of Britain....
on the Essex

Essex

Essex is a counties of England in the East of England England. The county town is Chelmsford, and the highest point of the county is Chrishall Common near the village of Langley, Essex, close to the Hertfordshire border, which reaches ....
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

Kent

Kent is a Counties of England in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the River Thames estuary....
via the Kentish Knock lighthouse
Lighthouse

A lighthouse is a tower, building, or framework designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens or, in older times, from a fire and used as an aid to navigation and to Maritime pilot at sea....
to Harwich

Harwich

Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district....
in Essex.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Thames Estuary'

Start a new discussion about 'Thames Estuary'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

River Thames

North Sea

Canvey Island

Essex

Kent

Harwich

Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district....
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

Coast

The coast is defined as that part of the land adjoining or near the ocean or its saltwater arms. A precise line that can be called a coastline cannot be determined due to the process of tides....
of Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the List of islands by area, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is List of islands by population....
. It constitutes a major shipping

Shipping

Shipping is physical process of transporting product and cargo. Virtually every product ever made, bought, or sold has been affected by shipping....
route, with thousands of movements each year including large oil tanker

Oil tanker

An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker....
s, container ship

Container ship

Container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport....
s, bulk carrier

Bulk carrier

A bulk carrier, bulk freighter, or bulker is a merchant ship specially designed to transport unpackaged bulk cargo, such as grains, coal, ore, and cement in its cargo holds....
s and roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ferries entering the estuary for the Port of London

Port of London

The Port of London lies along the banks of the River Thames from London, England to the North Sea. Once the largest port in the World, in recent years it has been United Kingdom's second or third largest port....
and the Medway Ports

Medway Ports

Medway Ports, incorporating the Port of Sheerness and Chatham, Medway Docks is part of Peel Group, the second largest port group in the United Kingdom....
of Sheerness

Sheerness

Sheerness is a town located beside the mouth of the River Medway on the northwest corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 12,000 it is the largest town on the island....
, Chatham

Chatham, Medway

Chatham is a large area within Medway, Kent, in South East England. It developed around a 17th-century naval dockyard on the River Medway, and was once a separate town....
and Thamesport

Thamesport

London Thamesport is a containerization List of seaports on the River Medway, serving the North Sea. It is on the Isle of Grain, in the Medway unitary authority, Kent, England in the United Kingdom....
.

The Thames sailing barge

Thames sailing barge

A Thames sailing barge was a type of commercial sailing boat common on the River Thames in London in the 19th century. The flat-bottomed barges were perfectly adapted to the Thames Estuary, with its shallow waters and narrow rivers....
worked in this area, designed to be suitable for the shallow waters in the smaller ports. One of the largest wind farm

Wind farm

A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used for production of electric power. Individual turbines are interconnected with a medium voltage power collection system and communications network....
s in the UK has been developed in the estuary, located 8.5km north of Herne Bay

Herne Bay, Kent

Herne Bay is a seaside town in Kent, South East England, with a population of 35,188. On the south coast of the Thames Estuary, it is north of Canterbury and east of Whitstable....
. The farm contains 30 wind turbines generating a total of 82.4MW of electricity. The much larger London Array

London Array

The London Array is a planned offshore wind farm in the outer Thames Estuary in the United Kingdom. Of 1 gigawatt capacity, it is expected to become the world's largest offshore wind farm....
of up to 1GW capacity is also planned.

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

North Kent Marshes

The North Kent Marshes, located in the north of the county of Kent on the Thames Estuary in south-east England, is one of 22 Environmentally Sensitive Areas recognised by the UK government's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ....
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

River Colne, Essex

The River Colne is a small river that runs through Colchester. It is not a tributary of any other river, instead having an estuary that joins the sea near Brightlingsea....
, Blackwater

River Blackwater, Essex

The River Blackwater is a river in England. It rises in the northwest of Essex as the Pant and flows through Essex to Braintree, Essex from where its name changes to the Blackwater....
and Crouch

River Crouch

The River Crouch is a river that flows entirely through the England county of Essex.The distance of the navigation between Holliwell Point which is north of Foulness Island and Battlesbridge is 17.5 Miles...
; and there are small villages concerned with a coastal economy (fishing, boat-building, and yachting) . The Isle of Sheppey, Foulness Island and Mersea Island

Mersea Island

Mersea Island is the most easterly inhabited island in the United Kingdom, located marginally off the coast of the county of Essex, to the southeast of Colchester....
are part of the coastline

Where higher land reaches the coast there are some larger settlements, such as Clacton-on-Sea

Clacton-on-Sea

Clacton-on-Sea is the largest town on the Tendring Peninsula, in Essex, England and was founded in 1871. It is a seaside resort that attracted many tourists in the 1960s and '70s, but which like other English resorts has been in decline since foreign holidays became more fashionable and affordable making it more popular as a retirement hotsp...
(to the north in Essex), Herne Bay

Herne Bay, Kent

Southend-on-Sea

Southend-on-Sea is a unitary authority area, town, and seaside resort in the ceremonial counties of England of Essex in the East of England England....
area within the narrower part of the estuary

The Thames Estuary is part of Thames Gateway

Thames Gateway

The Thames Gateway is an area of land stretching 40 miles east from inner East London, England on both sides of the River Thames and the Thames Estuary....
, 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

Maplin Sands

The Maplin Sands are mudflats on the northern bank of the Thames estuary, off Foulness Island, near Southend-on-Sea in Essex, England. They are valuable as a wildlife reserve, with a large colony of dwarf eelgrass and associated animal communities....
was a contender; in 2002 it was to be at Cliffe, Kent

Cliffe, Kent

Cliffe is a village on the Hoo peninsula in Kent, England, reached from the Medway Towns by a three-mile journey along the B2000. Situated upon a low chalk escarpment overlooking the North Kent Marshes, Cliffe offers the adventurous rambler views of Southend-on-Sea and London....
. The new airport would be built on a man-made island in the estuary north of Minster-in-Sheppey

Minster-in-Sheppey

Minster is a small town on the north coast of the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, England, east of Sheerness....
There is also some discussion about the need for a Lower Thames Crossing

Lower Thames Crossing

Lower Thames Crossing is a major transport infrastructure project proposed for the southeast of England in the United Kingdom. It would link the county of Kent on the south side of the Thames with the county of Essex to the north via a bridge or tunnel....
in order to alleviate traffic congestion at Dartford.

Cultural references

Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad was a Polish novelist, writing in English. Many critics regard him as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, despite his not having learned to speak English fluently until he was in his twenties ....
's The Mirror of the Sea (1906) contains a memorable description of the area as seen from the Thames. It is also described in the first pages of Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Poland writer Joseph Conrad. Before its 1902 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine....
, as both the launching place of England's great ships of exploration and colonization and, in ancient times, the site of colonization of the British Isles by the Roman Empire.

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

Estuary English

Estuary English is a name given to the dialect of English language widely spoken in South East England and the East of England; especially along the River Thames and Thames Estuary, which is where the two regions meet....
.