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The Quaternary is represented widely over land areas and sea floors around Britain by sediments formed under conditions which ranged from warm temperate to glacial, humid to semi-arid, and which involved glacial, periglacial, fluvial, mass movement, marine and aeolian processes.
The distribution of Quaternary sediments has been depicted on maps of the Geological Survey since the 1840s and most recently on the Ordnance Survey Quaternary Map of the United Kingdom, (1977, two sheets) at a scale of 1:625,000. The Oxford Atlas of Britain and Northern Ireland (1963) and the Atlas of Ireland (1979) include Quaternary maps, and Britain is covered by two sheets of the International Quaternary Map of Europe (1967) at a scale of 1:2,500,000. Maps of sea-floor sediments are being published as surveys are completed (Cameron et al. 1987). Stages of the Quaternary sequence as currently established are listed by West (1980) and Bowen et al. (1986).
Qla: Quaternary geography
The maximum extent ever reached by icesheets in southern Britain is better known in the east, and the western limit of 1°30'W is an approximation because definitive deposits are sparsely distributed. The Scilly Islands represent the most southerly point reached by a British icesheet, but the limit across the Celtic Sea is hypothetical, drawn with regard both to the nature of the continental shelf and to the fact that Ireland is known to have been wholly glacierized on at least one occasion. This maximum limit may be diachronous. Bowen et al. (1986) regard it as wholly Anglian, but
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