It is a largely man-made pillar outcrop, formed when an incline to a quarry was cut behind it, isolating the pillar from the main hillside.[1] It is named for its peculiar shape, that of a crooked and twisted chimney rising from the ground. The Devil's Chimney is a local landmark, but its origins are uncertain. In 1926 it survived an earthquake, but not without a few cracks. In 1985 it was repaired and protected from further erosion.
The Devil's Chimney is on the western edge of the Leckhampton Hill Local Nature Reserve,[2][3] which is part of the CotswoldsArea of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Leckhampton Hill has a history of extensive stone quarrying.
Local legend
The outcrop was well-known as a local landmark by the time that Cheltenham was established as a popular tourist destination, although its true origin appears to have been forgotten already. Ruff's History of Cheltenham (1803) describes it as, its grotesque chimney, built by preternatural hands and Built by the devil, as say the vulgar. It was no doubt built by shepherds in the frolic of an idle hour.[1][4]
Legend holds that the Devil's Chimney is the chimney of the Devil's dwelling deep beneath the ground. Supposedly the Devil, provoked by the many Christian churches of the area, would sit atop Leckhampton Hill and hurl stones at Sunday churchgoers. However the stones were turned back on him, driving him beneath the ground and trapping him there so he could not further harass the villagers. Now he uses the mass of stones as his chimney to let free the smokes of hell.
Visitors to the Devil's Chimney would leave a coin on the rock as payment to the Devil in exchange for his staying in his underground home and not leaving to create mischief and spread evil in the local area.
Geology
Leckhampton Hill comprises a flat-topped plateau, reaching a maximum height of 965 feet ASL. Four main horizontal rock strata form it. These are all limestones of the Middle JurassicInferior Oolite sequence. Below these are the Lias clays that form the valley floor. The Lower Lias form the valley floor, the marlstones of the Middle Lias form a prominent shelf that now carries the B4070 Birdlip Road which passes below the Chimney.[5] The hill itself is formed of a series of limestones of similar age, but quite distinct appearance (from the base upwards): the lower limestones, pea grit, freestone and ragstones. There is also a variation in colour from a pale cream in the upper ragstones down to a russet brown at the base, owing to a higher iron content.[6]
Heading uphill from the usual car park on Daisy Bank Road the lower slopes are planted with trees to stabilise them, where blocks of limestone slide downwards over the clays and then sands of the Lias acting as a weak lubricated layer. Some earthworks of the old tramways can be seen at this point, past lime kilns.[7]
Behind the lime kilns, a 32ft (9.8m) bed of the pisolitic Pea Grit forms a steeper but crumbly cliff. This is a distinctive and well-known exposure for the Cotswold oolites, which here form ovoid pisoliths the size of a pea. The mechanism of oolite formation is like that of a pearl, where material is progressively deposited around some initial seed fragment. In these rocks, the seeds have been identified as filaments of the algae Girvanella pisolitica.[7]
Above the Pea Grits are two layers of freestone, separated by a band of oolitic marl,[8] forming a series around 100ft (30m) thick, or deeper elsewhere in the area. Although all the limestones here have been quarried for lime burning, it was these freestones that formed the most valuable stone, and the main reason for quarrying at this location.[7] These freestones, like those mined around Bath, were cut and worked 'green', i.e. still damp from the ground. As they dried out, a layer of calcium carbonate forms on the surface which has a protective effect against chemical erosion. Removing this layer accelerates erosion.[9] The freestones show clear current bedding, although some examples are so pronounced that it could form a weak spot and make the stone less useful for stonemasonry.[10]
The Chimney itself is formed from the lower freestone. Its flat top represents the upper surface of the lower freestone, and the transition to the marls that would not support any such narrow column.[1]
Francis Close Hall of St Paul's College, showing the Neo Gothic and rubble masonry style,using two distinct stones from Leckhampton Quarry
Above the freestones are the ragstones, about 20 to 30ft (6.1 to 9.1m) thick.[8] These split easily into flat pieces and are more easily quarried than the freestones, but were less valuable. They were used locally for dry stone walling and for building in rubble masonry or Neo Gothic styles, such as at St Pauls College.[10][11] These ragstones are classed as shelly limestones, being fossiliferous with Gryphaea and Trigonia bivalves.[8] Although the main plateau of the hill is at 900ft (270m) elevation, quarrying of the ragstone and upper freestone has been so extensive as to have formed a second plateau below this, around the perimeter of the hill.[10]
The 19th-century geologistS. Buckman suggested that the strange shape of the Devil's Chimney could be put down to differential erosion, involving a softer outer rock being worn away to leave only the inner harder rock remaining. However there is no evidence for such a column of harder rock, nor an explanation for how it would form. The truth is probably that the Devil's Chimney was left behind by 18th-century quarry workers, who quarried around it as a joke.[12]
Just to the South of the Chimney, the smaller workings of Salterley Grange Quarry form another exposure of the freestone. Movement of these rocks over the Pea Grit beneath has opened up much of their vertical jointing into fissures, some of which even show travertine deposits, although not in a commercially significant quantity. Some of the blocks between the fissures may, in time, separate sufficiently to indicae a possible formation mechanism for a column like the Chimney.[13]
Quarrying
Georgian Cheltenham was largely built with stone from the quarries of Leckhampton Hill. The oolitic limestone higher up the hill is a freestone of good quality for dressed stonework. Quarrying here was probably ancient, but it was expensive to transport the stone as the hill was too steep to allow stone to be carried by carts until it had been carried down to the Birdlip Road. The first industrial-era quarry began shortly after 1797 when the Cheltenham surgeon Charles Brandon Trye inherited the estate of Leckhampton Court. Soon afterwards, by 1803, he had constructed the first rope-worked incline from the road to the quarry atop the hill, passing just behind the Chimney.[14] Bick dates the Chimney to before 1803 and reports that a Leckhampton antiquarian Alfred Bendall dated it to before 1795.[15]
The Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad was formed in 1809 and included a branch southwards 2 3/4 miles to the foot of Leckhampton Hill, with Trye extending his tramway to join it, by constructing two more rope-worked inclines, Middle and Bottom, with a descent of 370 feet[14] and a total length of 950 yards, costing Trye £1,900.[15] These were designed by John Hodgkinson, the engineer of the Tramroad, who may also have designed the first incline.[14][16] Although the utility of these new tramroads and inclines for the supply of building stone was welcomed in the Cheltenham Chronicle on their completion in April 1810, Trye did not live to see their benefits, as he died in 1811.[15] After the opening of the tramroad, the price of dressed stone blocks in Cheltenham had dropped to just 1d per ton.[17]
Once the Tramroad was in operation, stone for Cheltenham was taken by that route and the original incline to the Birdlip Road was less important, and closed by about 1830.[14][15] The quarries and inclines were still expanding though and another incline was constructed to the East, Top Incline.[14] This may have re-used equipment taken from the closure of the original incline.
Conservation
The outcrop is prone to erosion and by the 1960s had clearly visible signs of a likely collapse within 25–50 years. This was most noticeable on the exposed western side away from the hill, where a large vertical fissue was obvious.[1]
Repair work was performed in the 1980s. This is most obvious in the lower section, which now resembles a man-made wall.[18]
The Cotswold Way is a 102-mile (164 km) long-distance footpath, running along the Cotswold Edge escarpment of the Cotswold Hills in England. It was officially inaugurated as a National Trail on 24 May 2007 and several new rights of way have been created.
Oolite or oölite is a sedimentary rock formed from ooids, spherical grains composed of concentric layers. Strictly, oolites consist of ooids of diameter 0.25–2 millimetres; rocks composed of ooids larger than 2 mm are called pisolites. The term oolith can refer to oolite or individual ooids.
The Cromford and High Peak Railway (C&HPR) was a standard-gauge line between the Cromford Canal wharf at High Peak Junction and the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge. The railway, which was completed in 1831, was built to carry minerals and goods through the hilly rural terrain of the Peak District within Derbyshire, England. The route was marked by a number of roped worked inclines. Due to falling traffic, the entire railway was closed by 1967.
Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. Covering an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi); it borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east, and Hampshire to the east. The great variation in its landscape owes much to the underlying geology, which includes an almost unbroken sequence of rocks from 200 to 40 million years ago (Mya) and superficial deposits from 2 Mya to the present. In general, the oldest rocks appear in the far west of the county, with the most recent (Eocene) in the far east. Jurassic rocks also underlie the Blackmore Vale and comprise much of the coastal cliff in the west and south of the county; although younger Cretaceous rocks crown some of the highpoints in the west, they are mainly to be found in the centre and east of the county.
Bredon Hill is a hill in Worcestershire, England, south-west of Evesham in the Vale of Evesham. The summit of the hill is in the parish of Kemerton, and it extends over parts of eight other parishes. The hill is geologically part of the Cotswolds and lies within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. However, it now stands isolated in the Vale of Evesham due to natural causes.
The Birmingham and Gloucester Railway (B&GR) was the first name of the railway linking the cities in its name and of the company which pioneered and developed it; the line opened in stages in 1840, using a terminus at Camp Hill in Birmingham. It linked with the Bristol and Gloucester Railway in Gloucester, but at first that company's line was broad gauge, and Gloucester was a point of the necessary but inconvenient transhipment of goods and passengers onto 4 ft 8+1⁄2 instandard gauge that became the national standard. Nearly all of the original main line remains active as a "trunk" route, also known as an arterial route or line.
Bath Stone is an oolitic limestone comprising granular fragments of calcium carbonate originally obtained from the Middle Jurassic aged Great Oolite Group of the Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines under Combe Down, Somerset, England. Its honey colouring gives the World Heritage City of Bath, England, its distinctive appearance. An important feature of Bath Stone is that it is a 'freestone', so-called because it can be sawn or 'squared up' in any direction, unlike other rocks such as slate, which form distinct layers.
Leckhampton is a village and a district in south Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. The area is in the civil parish of Leckhampton with Warden Hill and is part of the district of Cheltenham. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 4,409.
Gloucestershire is one of the most geologically and scenically diverse counties in England, with rocks from the Precambrian through to the Jurassic represented. These varying rock-types are responsible for the three major areas of the county, each with its own distinctive scenery and land-use - the Forest of Dean in the west, bordering Wales, the Cotswolds in the east, and in between, the Severn Vale.
The Gloucester and Cheltenham Tramroad, also known as the Gloucester and Cheltenham Railway, connected Gloucester and Cheltenham with horse-drawn trams. Its primary economic purpose was the transport of coal from Gloucester's docks to the rapidly developing spa town of Cheltenham and the transport of building stone from quarries on nearby Leckhampton Hill.
The Brecon Forest Tramroad is an early nineteenth century tramroad, or rather a network of connecting tramroads or waggonways, which stretched across the hills of Fforest Fawr in the historic county of Brecknockshire in south Wales, UK. Its northern terminus was at the village of Sennybridge in the Usk Valley whilst its southern ends lay at Abercraf and Ystradgynlais in the upper Swansea Valley some 20 km to the south.
Kentish ragstone is a hard grey limestone in Kent, England, drawn from the geological sequence known as the Hythe Beds of the Lower Greensand. For millennia it has been quarried for use both locally and further afield.
Bull Cross, The Frith and Juniper Hill is a 42.33-hectare (104.6-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1954. The site is listed in the ‘Stroud District’ Local Plan, adopted November 2005, Appendix 6 as an SSSI and Regionally Important Geological Site (RIGS).
Crickley Hill and Barrow Wake is a 56.8-hectare (140-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1974.
Leckhampton Hill and Charlton Kings Common is a 63.8-hectare (158-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1954. There are five units of assessment.
The geology of the Isle of Skye in Scotland is highly varied and the island's landscape reflects changes in the underlying nature of the rocks. A wide range of rock types are exposed on the island, sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous, ranging in age from the Archaean through to the Quaternary.
The Pwll Du Tunnel was the longest horse-powered tramway tunnel to be built in Britain at 1,875 metres (6,152 ft) in length. It started in Blaenavon, Torfaen, Wales, and was originally a coal mine, running northward almost horizontally into a hillside. Later it was extended right through the hill and used to carry limestone from quarries at Pwll Du and Tyla to the ironworks at Blaenavon, and to carry pig iron from Blaenavon to the Garnddyrys Forge. The tramway was extended past Garnddyrys to Llanfoist Wharf on the Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal. The tramway from Pwll Du to the canal fell out of use when the railway came to Blaenavon and the Garnddyrys forge was closed in 1860, but the tunnel continued to be used to carry limestone to Blaenavon until 1926. It is now a scheduled monument and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Porth Wen Brickworks first built by Charles E Tidy, is now a disused Victorian brickworks which produced fire bricks, made from quartzite (silica) used to line steel-making furnaces. The substantial remains include a number of buildings and the remains of some of the machinery, but has some damage from sea erosion. The site is a scheduled monument.
Leckhampton Court is a Grade II* listed 14th-century manor house in Leckhampton, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Bick, David (1987). "7: The Leckhampton Quarries and Tramroads". The Gloucester & Cheltenham Tramroad and the Leckhampton Quarry lines. Oxford: Oakwood Press. ISBN0853613362.
Bick, D E. (1994). Old Leckhampton. Runpast Publishing. ISBN1870754271.
Dreghorn, William (1967). Geology Explained in the Severn Vale and Cotswolds. Newton Abbot: David & Charles. pp.94–96. ISBN0953443752.
Household, Humphrey (1984). "Leckhampton Quarries – The early 19th century plate tramways". Gloucestershire railways in the twenties. Gloucester: Alan Sutton. pp.93–100. ISBN0-86299-197-8.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
