Report of the East Yorkshire Boulder Committee 2022 onwards

compiled by Mike Horne

a work in progress

In the early days of the Hull Geological Society, a committee was formed to record the occurrence of glacial erratic boulders in East Yorkshire. Thousands of these boulders were found and their localities are reported in the Society's Transactions and The Naturalist in articles by Thomas Sheppard and J.W.Stather, between 1894 and 1905. Reports were also made to the meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, together with other regional Boulder Committees. When all the reports were put together they formed a large source of data which was used in retracing the paths of the glaciers during the Ice Age. Today this would be called "citizen science".

The Society decided to reform an informal Boulder Committee in 1987 as a contribution to the Society's Centenary celebrations. The Committee has continued in an informal way since then.

The sites are arranged alphabetically. The specimens recorded were seen loose on the beach unless otherwise specified.

Aldbrough - Pleurotomaria

Hornsea (going south) - Norwegian rhomb porphyry, Dogger, gneiss, black flint, grey flint, yellow quartz, New Red Sandstone, brown sandstone, jasper, Lithostrotion, pink granite, basalt, Lower Jurassic shelly limestone, Brockram, Larvikite, mica schist, Gryphaea, Kimmeridge concretion, white quartz, Chalk, Jurassic belemnite, red veined fine grained sandstone, Canon Ball Limestone, coal, Ichthyosaur vertebra, Dactylioceras, red flint, Acroteuthis, Upper Cretaceous belemnite, brown micaceous sandstone, goniatite.

Leven (village) - Whin Sill

Mappleton - Icthyosaur verebra

Skipsea - clear quartz, yellow quartz, white quartz, grey flint, black flint, red flint, basalt, Norwegian rhomb porphyry, Gryphaea, vein quartz, Dogger, jasper, Old Red Sandstone, Cannon Ball Limestone, Larvikite, Lower Jurassic Shelly Limestone, Kimmeridge Septarian Nodule, New Red Sandstone, gneiss, Echinocorys in black flint, Middle Jurassic plant bed, Brockram,  red granite, Jurassic scaphopods, belemnite from the Chalk.

Skipsea (in cliff Skipsea Till) - ice scratched Old Red Sandstone, sponge-bored Chalk.

Spurn Point - Galerites (large)

Withernsea - pink chalk, grey flint, Gryphaea.

Wold Newton area (Lincolnshire) - basalt.

Descriptions of distinctive erratics