Midgeholme Coalfield

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The Midgeholme Coalfield is a coalfield in Midgeholme, [1] on the border of Cumbria with Northumberland in northern England. It is the largest of a series of small coalfields along the south side of the Tyne Valley and which are intermediate between the Northumberland and Durham Coalfields to the east and the Cumberland Coalfield to the west. Like the other small coalfields to its east, this small outlier of the Coal Measures at Midgeholme occurs on the Stublick-Ninety Fathom Fault System, a zone of faults defining the northern edge of the Alston Block otherwise known as the North Pennines. It is recorded that coal was being mined at Midgeholme in the early seventeenth century. In the 1830s coal trains were being hauled from Midgeholme Colliery along the Brampton Railway by Stephenson's Rocket. [2] The early workings have left a legacy of spoil heaps, bell pits, shafts and adits. There is no current coal production. [3] [4] However in January 2014, Northumberland County Council gave planning permission for the open-cast extraction of 37,000 tonnes of coal at Halton Lea Gate. [5] This may open the way for other applications to mine the coalfield. In 1990 a proposal to mine reserves of 60,000 tonnes of good-quality coal at Lambley, Northumberland was rejected, but the prospect for a successful application has now changed, since the Planning Inspector allowed the development to proceed at Halton Lea Gate on appeal. [6]

The following coal seams are recognised from the Pennine Lower Coal Measures within this coalfield. The list is organised stratigraphically, with the uppermost seam first: [7]

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Hallbankgate Human settlement in England

Hallbankgate is a village in Cumbria, England, 13 miles (21 km) east of Carlisle. A former coal and lead mining village, it straddles the A689 Brampton to Alston road. Limestone is quarried here and it once had a gasworks and a forge. The village has a primary school, a village shop and tea room and a pub. There are three other hamlets in the civil parish, Farlam, Kirkhouse and Tindale.

Lambley, Northumberland Human settlement in England

Lambley, formerly known as Harper Town, is a village in Northumberland, England about four miles (6 km) southwest of Haltwhistle.The village lies adjacent to the River South Tyne. The place name Lambley refers to the "pasture of lambs". Lambley used to be the site of a small convent of Benedictine Nuns, founded by Adam de Tindale and Heloise, his wife, in the 12th century. The Scots led by William Wallace devastated it in 1296 [Rowland gives 1297]. However it was restored and one William Tynedale was ordained priest to the nunnery in about 1508 – most likely not William Tyndale, the reformer, as once believed but another man of the same name. At the time of the suppression of religious houses by Henry VIII, the nunnery contained six inmates. Nothing now remains but the bell from the nunnery, which hangs in the church, and a few carved stones. The village lies in the Midgeholme Coalfield and there are reserves of good-quality coal remaining.

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Flintshire Coalfield

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Durham Coalfield

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Northumberland Coalfield

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Cumberland Coalfield

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Leicestershire and South Derbyshire Coalfield

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Lancashire Coalfield Coal mining region in England

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Ingleton Coalfield Coalfield in North Yorkshire, England

The Ingleton Coalfield is in North Yorkshire, close to its border with Lancashire in north-west England. Isolated from other coal-producing areas, it is one of the smallest coalfields in Great Britain.

The Machrihanish Coalfield is a coalfield on the Kintyre peninsula in southwest Scotland. It is one of the smallest British coalfields. With the exception of a thin coal beneath the Lyoncross Limestone in the overlying Upper Limestone Formation, all of the coal-bearing strata are found within the Limestone Coal Formation, a subdivision of the Clackmannan Group; all being strata of Namurian age. There are numerous seams of which the Main Coal is the principal one, being some 3 to 4m thick. A further, higher seam known as the Kilkivan Coal has also been worked. The full sequence is:

The Canonbie Coalfield is a small and largely concealed coalfield at Canonbie in the south of Scotland. Survey work in recent years revealed potentially economically workable reserves beneath a cover of New Red Sandstone rocks.

Manchester Coalfield

The Manchester Coalfield is part of the South Lancashire Coalfield, the coal seams of which were laid down in the Carboniferous Period. Some easily accessible seams were worked on a small scale from the Middle Ages, and extensively from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century until the last quarter of the 20th century. The Coal Measures lie above a bed of Millstone Grit and are interspersed with sandstones, mudstones, shales, and fireclays. The Lower Coal Measures occupy the high ground of the West Pennine Moors above Bolton and are not worked in the Manchester Coalfield. The most productive of the coal measures are the lower two thirds of the Middle Coal Measures where coal is mined from seams between the Worsley Four Foot and Arley mines. The deepest and most productive collieries were to the south of the coalfield. The coalfield is affected by the northwest to southeast aligned Pendleton Fault along the Irwell Valley and the Rossendale Valley anticline. The Coal Measures generally dip towards the south and west. Numerous other smaller faults affect the coalfield. The Upper Coal Measures are not worked in the Manchester Coalfield.

The Warwickshire Coalfield extends between Warwick and Tamworth in the English Midlands. It is about 25 miles (40 km) from north to south and its width is around half that distance. Its western margin is defined by the 'Western Boundary Fault'. In the northeast it abuts against steeply dipping shales of Cambrian age. The larger part of the outcrop at the surface consists of the Warwickshire Group of largely coal-barren red beds. Until its closure in 2013, the Daw Mill mine near Arley within the coalfield, was Britain's biggest coal-producer in the 21st century.

Tindale, Cumbria Human settlement in England

Tindale or Tindale Fell is a hamlet in the parish of Farlam in the City of Carlisle district of the English county of Cumbria. It is to the south of the A689 Brampton to Alston road. It is a former mining village – both coal and lead were mined here. Limestone was quarried here.

The Pennine Coal Measures Group is a lithostratigraphical term referring to the coal-bearing succession of rock strata which occur in the United Kingdom within the Westphalian Stage of the Carboniferous Period. In formal use, the term replaces the Coal Measures Group as applied to the succession of coal-bearing strata within the Pennine Basin which includes all of the coalfields of northern England and the English Midlands. It includes the largely concealed Canonbie Coalfield of southern Scotland and the coalfields of northeast Wales and the minor Anglesey coalfield. The sequence consists in the main of mudstones and siltstones together with numerous sandstones, the more significant ones of which are individually named. Some are laterally extensive, others are more restricted in their range. There are numerous coal seams, again with some being more laterally continuous than others. Those which were economically valuable were named though any individual seam may have attracted different names in different pits and different districts. Marine bands preserving distinctive and dateable marine fossils such as goniatites and brachiopods are widespread within the sequence and enable correlation to be made between sequences in one part of the basin and another and with other basins

The geology of County Durham in northeast England consists of a basement of Lower Palaeozoic rocks overlain by a varying thickness of Carboniferous and Permo-Triassic sedimentary rocks which dip generally eastwards towards the North Sea. These have been intruded by a pluton, sills and dykes at various times from the Devonian Period to the Palaeogene. The whole is overlain by a suite of unconsolidated deposits of Quaternary age arising from glaciation and from other processes operating during the post-glacial period to the present. The geological interest of the west of the county was recognised by the designation in 2003 of the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as a European Geopark.

The geology of Northumberland in northeast England includes a mix of sedimentary, intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks from the Palaeozoic and Cenozoic eras. Devonian age volcanic rocks and a granite pluton form the Cheviot massif. The geology of the rest of the county is characterised largely by a thick sequence of sedimentary rocks of Carboniferous age. These are intruded by both Permian and Palaeogene dykes and sills and the whole is overlain by unconsolidated sediments from the last ice age and the post-glacial period. The Whin Sill makes a significant impact on Northumberland's character and the former working of the Northumberland Coalfield significantly influenced the development of the county's economy. The county's geology contributes to a series of significant landscape features around which the Northumberland National Park was designated.

Hapton Valley Colliery was a coal mine on the edge of Hapton near Burnley in Lancashire, England. Its first shafts were sunk in the early 1850s and it had a life of almost 130 years, surviving to be the last deep mine operating on the Burnley Coalfield.

References

  1. "Durham Mining Museum - Midgeholme Colliery".
  2. Michael R. Bailey, John P. Glithero, 2000, The engineering and history of Rocket: a survey report, Science Museum, London
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-07-22. Retrieved 2010-09-24.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. British Geological Survey 2007 Bedrock geology: UK North 1:625,000 scale geological map, BGS, Keyworth, Notts
  5. Hexham Courant 10 January 2014 'Villagers admit defeat after 15 years battling opencast'
  6. The Planning Inspectorate Inquiry 15 May 2012 Decision 7 August 2012 Appeal ref APP/P2935/A/11/2164056
  7. Stone P. et al. 2010. British Regional Geology: Northern England (5th Edn), (Keyworth, Notts, British Geological Survey)

Coordinates: 54°55′25″N2°33′47″W / 54.9237°N 2.5630°W / 54.9237; -2.5630