A midden is essentially a prehistoric rubbish heap, the kind of deposit left when communities discarded food waste, broken tools, and domestic refuse in the same place over time. What makes this one quietly arresting is the precision with which the dune has cut through it, leaving a clean section visible in the dune face like a layer in a geological diagram.

The deposit runs for approximately 40 metres north to south, sitting roughly a metre below the grass-covered surface of the dune and between three and three and a half metres above the beach. It is thickest towards its northern end, where the depth reaches about a metre and the material becomes most varied: shell, loose stone, an animal tooth, and what appears to be the remnant of a stone wall, suggesting this end of the midden was in use longest or most intensively. Moving southward, the shells grow sparser and the layer gradually fades out. The shells that have already eroded free and fallen to the beach below have been identified as limpets and periwinkles, both species that would have been collected from the nearby shoreline. A second midden lies roughly 150 metres to the south, hinting that this stretch of coast saw repeated, sustained occupation rather than a single episode of activity.

The dune face itself is the thing to look for: the shell band is visible in section rather than on the surface, so the deposit reads as a dark horizontal stripe caught within the pale sandy matrix of the dune wall. The ongoing erosion that makes it visible is also, of course, the same process slowly destroying it.