Hartlepool Submerged Forest (grid reference NZ520315) is a 19.7 hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in County Durham, England notified in 1988.

[1] A forest stretching for several miles along the Hartlepool coast is thought to have originated around 7,000 years ago.

It became submerged as sea levels rose over the next five millennia, but remains preserved to this day as a peaty soil, intermittently revealed on the foreshore by the ebb and flow of the tide.

Animal bones, including those of deer and wild boar have been discovered at the site, as well as flint tools and other implements pointing to human activity in the area thousands of years ago.

The site is also considered to be of significant importance in understanding sea level and environmental changes since the last ice age, and is identified as such in the Geological Conservation Review.