Qualla: Silver Pit https://qualla.com/silver-pit en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:34 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/8/8/silver-pit-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Silver Pit https://qualla.com/silver-pit Silver Pit: Introduction https://qualla.com/silver-pit/ Photo credit Halava, CC BY-SA 3.0. An Ice Age river left it here. The Silver Pit is a long, narrow valley carved into the bed of the North Sea, forty-five kilometres east of Spurn Head - now drowned under cold water, but once a tributary of the Wash River, when sea levels were lower and the British and European coasts touched. The pit is a tunnel valley: a deep, narrow channel cut by meltwater flowing under enormous pressure beneath the ice sheets of the Devensian glaciation, about 15,000 years ago. The North Sea fishermen of the 19th century, working their trawls across these grounds in the Victorian boom, found it full of flatfish - especially soles in winter. They named it the Silver Pit for the sheen of those flatfish piling into their nets. That name has stuck for almost two centuries.

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Image: Halava | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/8/8/silver-pit-wp/u188-silver-pit-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Silver Pit: How the Pit Was Cut https://qualla.com/silver-pit/ Photo credit Halava, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Silver Pit's geology is glaciation in cross-section. During the last glacial maximum - the Devensian, ending around 11,700 years ago - much of northern Europe lay under ice sheets hundreds of metres thick. The pressure of all that ice forced meltwater to flow not over the sur...

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Image: Halava | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/8/8/silver-pit-wp/u188-silver-pit-how-the-pit-was-cut.mp3 0:06 2 full Silver Pit: The Victorian Trawlermen https://qualla.com/silver-pit/ Photo credit Halava, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Silver Pit was discovered, in the working sense, by trawler fishermen from the South Coast of England in the 19th century. The North Sea trawl fishery was at that point one of the world's largest extractive industries. Sailing smacks - heavy beam-trawlers, much like the Frank...

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Image: Halava | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/8/8/silver-pit-wp/u188-silver-pit-the-victorian-trawlermen.mp3 0:06 3 full Silver Pit: The Crater That Wasn't, and Was, and Maybe Isn't https://qualla.com/silver-pit/ Photo credit Halava, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 2002, geologists Phil Allen and Simon Stewart announced the discovery of a buried crater-like structure in the seabed northeast of the Silver Pit, and named it the Silverpit crater after its neighbour. They proposed it was an impact crater - a remnant of an asteroid or comet s...

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Image: Halava | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/8/8/silver-pit-wp/u188-silver-pit-the-crater-that-wasnt-and-was-and-maybe-isnt.mp3 0:06 4 full Silver Pit: Doggerland's Edge https://qualla.com/silver-pit/ Photo credit Halava, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Silver Pit lies on the threshold of Doggerland - the drowned plain that connected Britain to continental Europe until about 8,200 years ago, when post-glacial sea-level rise and a tsunami from the Storegga landslide finally submerged it. Mesolithic hunters lived on Doggerland...

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Image: Halava | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/8/8/silver-pit-wp/u188-silver-pit-doggerlands-edge.mp3 0:06 5 full