The Submerged Forest of Borth (Photo By Eveengland – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107065007)
Dear Readers, as you might remember from yesterday I’ve got a bit of a throat infection at the moment – my voice is coming back (Hooray!) but now I have a cough (Boo!) and so I am confined to quarters for the rest of today. Fortunately, for inspiration I have my ‘A Tree A Day’ book by Amy-Jane Beer, and the entry for 4th February mentions the Borth Submerged Forest in Wales.
I am always fascinated by the things that the sea suddenly reveals after storms, or at particularly low or high tides, and at Borth, on the Ceredigion coast in Wales, what come up are the tree stumps of an ancient forest of hazel and oak, pine and birch. The trees have been carbon-dated, and it seems that they died between 4,000 and 6,500 years ago. It appears that the sea level rose, and a thick layer of peat formed – these anaerobic conditions may have killed the trees, but the anaerobic conditions that they produced also protected the remains from rotting. Interestingly, a walkway dating from about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago has also been found, indicating that after the forest was destroyed, the local inhabitants found ways to live on in the increasingly boggy conditions. Human and animal footprints have also been found, along with the burned stones from ancient hearths.
Nearly every civilisation has ‘deluge myths’ – tales of how the sea/rain destroyed a city, or a whole civilisation. In this part of Wales there are tales of Cantre’r Gwaelod, a city that disappeared beneath the waves. It’s described as a walled city protected by a system of dykes and dams. Alas, one night one of the watchmen tasked with closing the sea protections got drunk, and the water poured in and inundated the city. It may be that this story is built upon Ice Age memories of sea level rise and the dangers that it presented to coastal communities. There is also a story that the city continues to live on beneath the waves, a kind of Welsh Atlantis. I find these stories very evocative – they are so full of yearning, a wish that things that are destroyed may continue against all evidence to the contrary. How human it is to wish for such things.
The remains seem to be revealed and then recovered by storms (Storm Hannah in 2014 and a storm in 2019 uncovered a whole swathe of the forest) and more enigmatic depositions and removal of sand. Sea defences to protect the existing village of Borth have been put in place and there is some thought that the sand and debris that used to cover the forest up are now being diverted elsewhere. Whatever the cause, archaeologists and palaeobotanists rush to look at the remains before sediment covers them again.
Let me know if you’ve visited Borth, or seen anything similar – the UK seems to be full of submerged villages, some of which (like Dunwich) apparently have church bells which still toll from under the sea. We have got a lot of coastline, and the sea has been giving and taking since the islands were formed, so it’s no wonder that stories, part truth and part fable, have grown up and buried themselves in our consciousness. I find it all very intriguing.
Your title would make an intriguing one for a novel. This is a fascinating find.
Bermuda, where I worked for a number of years, is famous for pink sand beaches and is built on sandstone dunes, with only a thin layer of soil. On one of the beaches, though, we could see peat deposits emerging from the sand, hinting at a different landscape long before humans arrived.
As we are facing the thread of rising oceans, I find this particularly poignant. Five years ago, I took my son to Venice as I didn’t know how long it might be around. I am going this year to Cornwall again because I worry about what the sea might do to low-lying towns there. While humans were blameless for the inundation of the Forest of Borth, I am ashamed of our role in the coming floods. I fear we will be the authors of our own misery (and that of other creatures!).
*threat
Agreed. Just studying this in my OU course, and it’s frightening how short-termist we are. Everything seems to rely on the election cycle.
Very touching and thought provoking.Not coastal but I find Mardale in Cumbria, where a reservoir inundated the village of Mardale Green, very poignant. Not many residents but it seems to have been a thriving farming community.
I hope you feel better soon.
Thank you! And yes, these places are very poignant, and so often what’s lost can never be replaced.
Hi Bugwoman, I was taken on holiday in Borth when I was a very small child. (My main memory is falling over on a rough path and hurting my knees.) There is another, similar submerged forest in Mounts Bay, Cornwall, just east of St Michael’s Mount.
Sorry about the knees! Isn’t it funny how these things linger on in our memory? One of my main memories of a particular seaside holiday is sitting on a wall for a photograph and the bricks scratching my legs….
The submerged forest here in Mount’s Bay was uncovered in the storms of early 2014, like the one at Borth. Oak and pine trunks and the remains of hazel thickets were identified, and the trees were carbon dated to between 4,000 and 6,000 old, so similar in age to the Borth ones. Mount’s Bay is named after St Michael’s Mount, the small island off the coast of Marazion – but its ancient Cornish name was Karrek Loos yn Koos, meaning Grey Rock in the Woods.
Hi. I spent three years living in Borth ( (1993-6) whilst a Post grad student at Aber. We had a house on the sea front, and on one or two occasions the sea intruded into the kitchen. And yes I did know about the tree stumps and the legends. It was a lovely place to live – but not a safe place to buy a house….
Wow! Yes, not an ideal spot to buy a house, unless you happen to love swimming from the oven to the sink I imagine. What were you studying? It sounds like an ideal spot for something ecological….