Highcliffe to Milford Cliffs (SSSI)
Location and Access Information
Grid Reference: SZ 240928
Exposure of Tertiary sediments at Milford.
Located 8km to the west of Lymington, this stretch of cliffs can be accessed from the seafront at Barton-on-Sea or Milford-on-Sea. Public car parking is available at both these locations.
View the site map on Nature on the Map
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Geological Interest
The Highcliffe to Milford Cliffs Site of Special Scientific Interest extends for some nine kilometres along the cliffs at Christchurch Bay. Its entire length comprises steep coastal slopes and cliffs which are locally dissected by deeply incised 'bunnies' or ravines. This coastal site provides access to the standard succession of the fossil rich Barton Beds and Headon Beds of Eocene age (approximately 50 million years old) and is important in an international context.
The clays and sands were deposited in sub-tropical, shallow marine, estuarine and freshwater habitats and contain an abundance of fossils. The Barton Clay is well known for the wide variety of marine gastropods (snails) that it yields while the Headon Beds of Hordle Cliff yield the remains of fossil reptiles such as turtles and crocodiles, mammals and plants. Along the section the cliffs are capped by gravels that were laid down by a large river complex (the Solent River) over the last 500,000 years during the various glacial and interglacial phases of the Ice Age. The gravels have yielded a large number of Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) human artefacts such as hand axes.
