Cooden’s Early Cretaceous foreshore exposes fault-separated Tunbridge Wells Sand and Weald Clay when tides and beach scour permit. Plant material and ironstone-hosted fossils are characteristic interests, with important insect records and occasional vertebrate remains. Loose finds do not always reveal which formation they came from.
FIND FREQUENCY: ♦♦♦ – Finds depend on exposure and scour; many loose specimens have uncertain bed provenance.
CHILDREN: ♦♦♦♦ – The approach is short, but supervise children around soft mud and tidal reefs.
ACCESS: ♦♦♦♦♦ – Use the public Cooden Beach approach and check current signs and parking conditions.
TYPE: Foreshore sediments, reefs and loose material exposed at low tide.
DIRECTIONS
♦ Follow the A259 through Bexhill and signs towards Cooden Beach at the western end of the town.
♦ The original approach passes beneath the railway bridge towards the beach. Use the public route and current access signs.
♦ Check parking terms at the place you choose; do not assume hotel parking or facilities are public.
♦ Ref: 50.83266°N, 0.42737°E – TQ 71031 06489
FOSSIL HUNTING
Look for exposed muddy foreshore and loose ironstone, rather than judging Cooden by the amount of shingle above it. Beach cover can change markedly between visits. Grey mudstone, plant-bearing pieces and weathered sideritic nodules provide the main search targets when scour exposes the shore. The original guide particularly noted fossil stems. Examine naturally detached material and its existing surfaces; do not prise specimens from the mud or break the intact reef.
Plant fragments are a sensible first target, while teeth, bones and insects require closer inspection and should not be expected on every visit. Compare the texture of a possible stem with the surrounding rock: a repeated woody or longitudinal pattern is more useful than a merely dark stain. Follow an impression along its length before deciding what it is, and retain the matrix supporting thin carbonised material. A hand lens and photographs taken in angled light are often more helpful than further splitting.
Cooden has genuine, precisely documented insect records. The cicada-like Valdicossus chesteri was described from a hindwing in a sideritic nodule, from the west-dipping lower Weald Clay reef near low water opposite Beaulieu Road. The same ironstone band yielded the cricket relative Probaisselcana cretacea. The wing of Valdicossus preserves fine venation and pigmentation, illustrating why a faint impression can be important. These are rare research specimens. Look carefully at naturally exposed nodule faces for branching vein patterns or repeated body segments, but do not expect every nodule to contain an insect. Keep both halves of any already-split specimen.
There are also useful modern field observations of fish. A 2012 geological society visit recorded a tooth of the hybodont shark now also classified as Parvodus parvidens, recorded then as Polyacrodus parvidens, in a loose Weald Clay block beside Cooden Beach Hotel, together with a separate nodule containing shark skin. Older references also use Hybodus parvidens; the generic placement is not uniform in recent literature. Look for a main cusp flanked by smaller side cusplets and coarse ridges running up the crown. Broken roots and worn cusp tips can make identification difficult. That report distinguishes the shark-bearing nodules on the coast west towards Norman’s Bay from the Cooden platform. It also stresses that rolled dinosaur bones and several other striking finds occur as “float”: loose, transported material whose source bed is uncertain.
Record the exact stretch, matrix and whether a specimen was loose: “Cooden beach, loose ironstone nodule” is more useful than an unsupported formation assignment. Preserve nodules showing several bones or skin texture intact for expert examination. Small pits or patterned marks should be photographed under angled light before preparation, which can remove the very surface needed for identification.
Dinosaur trackways have been reported specifically east of Cooden Beach Hotel in the published Cooden field account; this is a historical record, not a claim that the tracks are currently exposed. Photograph possible prints with a scale and location rather than removing them. The Rother collecting code requires loose-only, small-scale collecting and leaves footprints in place. Keep neighbouring Tunbridge Wells Sand exposures and transported material distinct from fossils securely documented in the lower Weald Clay reef.
A chronological record of fossil discoveries and geological research at Cooden.
1928 – Historical coastal section recorded
The older coastal description recorded a shale-on-sandstone contact, later reassigned from Wadhurst Clay to Weald Clay by BGS.
1987 – Local stratigraphy revised
BGS documented the fault-separated shore outcrops and clarified which cliff exposures had already been obscured by sea defences.
2008 – A new fossil insect named
Wang, Zhang and Jarzembowski named Valdicossus chesteri from a Cooden hindwing. The holotype and counterpart, MNEMG 2008.2 [Co 60], are deposited at Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery.
GEOLOGY
Fault-separated Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation and lower Weald Clay Formation occur on the Cooden foreshore. Older work’s identification of basal shale as Wadhurst Clay was corrected to Weald Clay. The formerly described conformable contact was no longer visible in the 1968 survey.
The Tunbridge Wells Sand exposures include red-mottled clayey silts cut by silt-filled channels, with a mud-pellet bed locally about 0.3 m thick along the channel floor. The lower Weald Clay patches have a different character: shaly mudstone is interrupted by silty, iron-rich and burrowed layers. Historical observations near the hotel also distinguish finely laminated mudstone from laminated siltstone over mudstone. These textures help explain why the shore is geologically varied even where the rocks are low and partly hidden beneath beach material.
The ironstone deserves particular attention because it can preserve evidence quite different from the enclosing mud. The type specimen of the fossil insect Valdicossus chesteri was a hindwing in a sideritic nodule from the west-dipping low-water reef opposite Beaulieu Road, at TQ 716 063. That precisely recorded occurrence is separate from fish and plant remains in loose ironstone nodules, whose original bed may be uncertain. It does not establish an insect-bearing layer running continuously along the whole foreshore, nor a formal geological member.
Faulting separates the exposed patches, so they do not form a continuous foreshore column.
The Cooden Borehole penetrated 106.7 m of Tunbridge Wells Sand and 13.5 m of Weald Clay. These figures are borehole records, not visible foreshore thicknesses. Similar pellet horizons suggest correlations but do not establish a unique match across the fault.
Detailed geology and stratigraphy of Cooden.
Cooden foreshore around the old hotel access and towards Beaulieu Road. Fault-separated Tunbridge Wells Sand and lower Weald Clay exposures require separate descriptions; the borehole is contextual, not a beach log.
WEALDEN GROUP
The modern BGS framework places these formations in the Wealden Group. Older publications use “Hastings Beds”, “Hastings Group” or “Wealden Supergroup”; these are historical classification schemes rather than extra units in the succession.
Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation
Early Cretaceous, late Valanginian. South-west of the fault at TQ 7026 0615, shore reefs expose the following features without a complete measured vertical stack.
Red-mottled clayey silts — Thickness not measured locally. The main exposed host sediment on this side of the fault.
Silt-filled channels and basal pellet bed — Pellet bed locally 0.3 m. Channels cut the clayey silts; their floor locally contains a mud-pellet layer. Similar borehole horizons do not establish a unique surface-to-borehole correlation.
Weald Clay Formation
Early Cretaceous; the fossil-insect reef is early Hauterivian. Inshore reefs east of the fault expose lower Weald Clay. These are separate patches and historic cliff observations, not one continuous measured log.
Shaly mudstones with silty beds — No complete local thickness. Ferruginous and burrowed silty layers interrupt the mudstone. Variable dips and strikes indicate an undulating structure, historically interpreted as a shallow syncline.
Mudstones with tabular ironstones — Historic exposure. Recorded in 1968 landslips at TQ 7125 0651, when defences otherwise obscured the low cliff.
Finely laminated mudstone — Historic exposure. Recorded west of the hotel at TQ 7068 0639.
Laminated siltstone over mudstone — Historic exposure. Recorded at TQ 7087 0643.
Polygonally fissured clay at TQ 714063. White’s1928 description records green-grey clay broken into polygonal blocks, with dark-green clay-breccia in the fissures. This historical locality is separate from the 1968 hotel exposures.
Ironstone-bearing reef at TQ 71620648. In 1968, medium-grey silty mudstone with ironstone beds was seen beside the topmost Tunbridge Wells Sand outcrop, with a recorded strike of 130°. It is a separate foreshore observation, not a continuous section through the formation contact.
Insect-bearing ironstone reef — Exact type locality; no bed thickness established. The type specimen of Valdicossus chesteri came from a west-dipping low-water reef opposite Beaulieu Road, TQ 716 063. Its sideritic nodule preserved a hindwing; it is not evidence for a continuous named member.
White’s old identification of the basal shales as Wadhurst Clay was corrected to Weald Clay. The conformable contact described in older literature was no longer visible in the 1968 survey; its historical description does not establish a present exposure.
The Cooden Borehole logged 106.7 m of Tunbridge Wells Sand and 13.5 m of Weald Clay. Those are borehole penetrations, not the thickness visible on the beach. Similar mud-pellet horizons occur at borehole depths of 71.6 and 83 m; the fault correlation is suggestive, not unique.
Fish and plant remains occur in loose ironstone nodules, with occasional vertebrate fossils. Loose finds cannot always be assigned securely to Weald Clay, so their provenance differs from fossils recorded directly in a bed.
Valdicossus chesteri is securely named from Cooden. The primary paper also places Probaisselcana cretacea in the same ironstone band. Avoid converting general fish remains into unsupported species lists.
Tunbridge Wells Sand Formation
Beaulieu Road historical cliff section. At TQ 71800660, south of the Beaulieu Road/Hartfield Road junction, the 1968 survey recorded about 4 m of sandstone and silt with lignitic bands. This is the eastern contextual edge of the scoped Cooden traverse, beyond the main lower Weald Clay reef; it belongs to Tunbridge Wells Sand. Richmond Avenue and Veness Gap lie farther east and are outside this panel.
References
Wang et al. (2008). Valdicossus chesteri taxonomic treatment, pp 67–68.
SAFETY
Check tide times and return before water isolates the exposed reefs or the access route. The absence of cliffs does not eliminate tidal risk.
Soft mud can be deep around exposures. Avoid unstable patches, keep children close and do not assume that a shingle bank provides an escape in all sea conditions.
EQUIPMENT
Take sturdy footwear with good grip, tide information, a hand lens, a camera, wrapping material and rigid specimen boxes. Keep the load manageable for the rocky shore.
A hand lens helps distinguish small teeth, scales, shell fragments and plant material. Do not bring digging tools for excavating in-situ beds; leave important tracks and large remains in place for recording.
CLEANING AND TREATING
Pack fragile clay-hosted remains separately and allow them to dry slowly. Begin with a soft dry brush only when the matrix is stable; do not soak flaky mudstone, bone or plant-rich material.
Hard sandstone, ironstone and bone-bed matrix can break through a fossil rather than around it. Avoid indiscriminate splitting, acids, bleach and routine coatings. Keep potentially important bones, teeth and associated remains unprepared and seek specialist advice.
IDENTIFY YOUR FINDS
Need help identifying a fossil? Share clear photos, where you found it and its size with the community.
FURTHER READING
Lake and Shephard-Thorn (1987), Geology of the country around Hastings and Dungeness
Hopson, Wilkinson and Woods (2008), A stratigraphical framework for the Lower Cretaceous of England, BGS RR/08/03
Wang, Zhang and Jarzembowski (2008), A new genus and species of Palaeontinidae (Insecta: Hemiptera: Cicadomorpha) from the Lower Cretaceous of southern England, Zootaxa 1751, 65–68 The linked PDF contains the first page only.
Wang and colleagues (2008), Valdicossus chesteri, taxonomic treatment, pp. 67–68
ACCESS RIGHTS
Use public access and follow current signs and landowner conditions. No blanket permission to excavate reefs or in-situ beds is established. Search genuinely loose material with minimal disturbance and record important finds.
It is important to follow our ‘Code of Conduct’ when collecting fossils or visiting any site. Please also read our ‘Terms and Conditions‘
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