2.3 Chalk Escarpment

Key characteristic features

• Steep distinctive chalk margin with dramatic undulating ridgeline.
• Rounded summits; precipitous slopes along northern chalk margins and undulating, often deeply incised chalk dip slopes to the south.
• Consistent height and slope profiles.
• Panoramic views from the escarpment ridge and striking views from the lowlands to the north to the ‘wall of the Weald’.
• Individual landscape elements, such as radio masts, chalk pits, clumps of trees and earthworks are prominent, highly visible landmarks.
• Farmland patchwork often extends some way up escarpment slopes, particularly on shallower gradients.
• Ancient chalkland track, the South Downs Way, follows ridgeline.
• Settlements concentrated along springline at foot of escarpment slopes.
• Prehistoric earthworks, in particular Iron Age hill forts, at prominent sites along crest of ridge.

The escarpment forms a dramatic undulating ridge along the northern margin of the chalk, broken only occasionally at wind gaps, where the principal chalk valleys have eroded a route through to the coast.

Although it is not part of the true chalk escarpment, for visual reasons the steep ridge along the west side of the River Ouse is included within the chalk escarpment landscape types (ref also principal chalk valleys)

Panoramic views from the ridgetop provide a stunning overview of the surrounding landscape and the escarpment itself is a dominant landscape feature in views throughout the AONB. The context of the escarpment landscape is particularly important: the quality of views out from the ridge has a strong influence on the character of the escarpment landscape itself. Any large-scale development within the viewshed of the ridge would have a strong negative visual impact. The landform of the escarpment is fairly consistent, although its visual character varies according to the proportion of woodland cover on the steep north-facing scarp slope and, to some extent, the character of the adjacent landscapes.

The open chalk escarpment landscape is a fine-grained mosaic of different landscape elements. It is predominantly open grassland, but also includes areas of woodland and scrub. It is therefore distinct from the simpler visual structure of the wooded chalk escarpment landscape type, where the steep slopes are entirely clothed in established mature woodland.

The landscape of the chalk escarpment has been sub-divided into two landscape types:

• Open chalk escarpment
• Wooded chalk escarpment

The area defined as chalk escarpment on the landscape character maps includes the steep north-facing slopes, the rounded ridgetop summits and part of the south-facing dip-slope. In visual, and landscape management terms, there is a need to preserve the visual continuity of the ridge landform as a whole and the landscape types are defined so as to make such strategies easier to describe and implement. The boundary between the landscape of the chalk uplands, on the dip slope to the south, and the escarpment is subjective, while that between the north-facing slope and the scarp footslopes landscape occurs at the break of slope at the foot of the escarpment.

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