Wallasea Island lies on the Essex coast, between the estuaries of the River Crouch and River Roach, 65 km eastnortheast of London (Figure 1).
The coast of southeast England, including Wallasea Island, is slowly sinking. There are two reasons for this. The first is isostatic readjustment (also known as post-glacial rebound). The UK is still reacting, extremely slowly but surely, to the melting of the ice that covered most of the country during the last glacial period. With the release of the enormous weight of the ice, the northwest of the UK (where the ice was thickest) is gradually rising and the southeast (where there was least ice) is gradually sinking.
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