The Pleistocene College Farm Silty Clay Member of the Creeting Formation at Great Blakenham, Suffolk, south-east England is shown to contain indigenous and recycled dinoflagellate cysts and other derived palynomorphs. The indigenous dinoflagellate cysts indicate a marine influence during deposition of the clay, whilst the other palynomorphs demonstrate derivation of sediment from a wide catchment of Carboniferous, Jurassic and Cretaceous bedrocks. It is argued, by comparison with palynological data from the Chillesford Clay Member of the Norwich Crag Formation some 25km to the east, that these sediments were eroded from western, south-central and south-eastern Britain, and transported by the early River Thames to its estuary, where they were redeposited at the western margin of the Crag Basin, during the Early Pleistocene Tiglian TC3 Substage. This interpretation refines earlier research which concluded the College Farm Silty Clay was deposited in a predominantly freshwater environment, such as a lagoon, without any direct access to the sea or major river.

Shells belonging to the bivalve genus Corbicula occur commonly in Pleistocene interglacial deposits in NW Europe. These have usually been identified as C. fluminalis, a modern species described from the Euphrates river, although the veracity of this specific attribution remains equivocal. Corbicula has nowadays a southern distribution, and laboratory studies indicate that it is thermophilous. It is also tolerant of brackish water, one of several attributes that make this an effective colonizer.

In NW Europe, Corbicula is known from the Lower Pleistocene but is absent from the Cromerian Complex, occuring again in the three interglacials following the Anglian/Elsterian. It appears to be unknown from the last interglacial, except as derived fossils.