Several species of humans have intermittently occupied Great Britain for almost a million years. The earliest evidence of human occupation around 900,000 years ago is at Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast, with stone tools and footprints probably made by Homo antecessor. The oldest human fossils, around 500,000 years old, are of Homo heidelbergensis at Boxgrove in Sussex. Until this time Britain had been permanently connected to the Continent by a chalk ridge between South East England and northern France called the Weald-Artois Anticline, but during the Anglian Glaciation around 425,000 years ago a megaflood broke through the ridge, and Britain became an island when sea levels rose during the following Hoxnian interglacial.
Boxgrove handaxes, c. 500,000 BP, at the British Museum
Robin Hood Cave Horse, from Creswell Crags, c. 10,500 BC
Star Carr Pendant, c. 9000 BC
Howick house, c. 7600 BC
Happisburgh is a village civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is on the coast, to the east of a north–south road, the B1159 from Bacton on the coast to Stalham. It is a nucleated village. The nearest substantial town is North Walsham 6 miles (10 km) to the west.
A Happisburgh road partially washed away by coastal erosion.
Saint Mary's, Happisburgh
The lighthouse at Happisburgh
Happisburgh's lifeboat station and Royal National Lifeboat Institution shop