The Northumberland Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Durham Coalfield to its south. [1] It extends from Shilbottle in the north to the boundary with County Durham along the River Tyne in the south, beyond which is the Durham Coalfield. [2]
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
The Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Northumberland Coalfield to its north. It extends from Bishop Auckland in the south to the boundary with the county of Northumberland along the River Tyne in the north, beyond which is the Northumberland Coalfield.
Shilbottle is a village in Northumberland, north-east England, located 3 miles south-east of Alnwick, and 5 miles from the coast and Alnmouth. The village stands close to the A1.
The two contiguous coalfield areas were often referred to as the Durham and Northumberland Coalfield(s) or as the Great Northern Coalfield. [3]
The following coal seams are recorded from the Northumberland Coalfield. They are listed here in stratigraphic order with the youngest at the top and the oldest/deepest at the bottom. [4] Not all seams are named and not all occur at any one locality.
Upper Coal Measures
Middle Coal Measures
Lower Coal Measures
Stainmore Formation (Namurian)
Alston Formation (Visean)
Marsden is located on the outskirts of the seaside town South Shields, North East England, located on the North Sea coast.
The Northern Football Alliance is a football competition based in the Northeast of England and Cumbria. It has three divisions headed by the Premier Division, which sits at step 7 of the National League System. Under a sponsorship agreement it is billed as the Newcastle Building Society Northern Football Alliance.
The Somerset Coalfield in northern Somerset, England is an area where coal was mined from the 15th century until 1973. It is part of a larger coalfield which stretched into southern Gloucestershire. The Somerset coalfield stretched from Cromhall in the north to the Mendip Hills in the south, and from Bath in the east to Nailsea in the west, a total area of about 240 square miles (622 km2). Most of the pits on the coalfield were concentrated in the Cam Brook, Wellow Brook and Nettlebridge Valleys and around Radstock and Farrington Gurney. The pits were grouped geographically, with clusters of pits close together working the same coal seams often under the same ownership. Many pits shared the trackways and tramways which connected them to the Somerset Coal Canal or railways for distribution.
The South Yorkshire Coalfield is so named from its position within Yorkshire. It covers most of South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and a small part of North Yorkshire. The exposed coalfield outcrops in the Pennine foothills and dips under Permian rocks in the east. Its most famous coal seam is the Barnsley Bed. Coal has been mined from shallow seams and outcrops since medieval times and possibly earlier.
The West Stanley colliery was a coal mine near Stanley. The mine opened in 1832 and was closed in 1936. Over the years several seams were worked through four shafts: Kettledrum pit, Lamp pit, Mary pit and New pit. In 1882 an underground explosion killed 13 men and in 1909 another explosion killed 168 men.
Coal mining in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times and occurred in many different parts of the country. Britain's coalfields are associated with Northumberland and Durham, North and South Wales, Yorkshire, the Scottish Central Belt, Lancashire, Cumbria, the East and West Midlands and Kent. After 1970, coal mining quickly collapsed and practically disappeared in the 21st century. The consumption of coal – mostly for electricity – fell from 157 million tonnes in 1970 to 18 million tonnes in 2016. Of the coal mined, 77% of supplies were imported from Colombia, Russia and the United States. Of the coal mined in the UK in 2016 all was from open-cast coal mines. Employment in coal mines fell from a peak of 1,191,000 in 1920 to 695,000 in 1956, 247,000 in 1976, 44,000 in 1993, and to 2,000 in 2015.
The Flintshire Coalfield in north-east Wales is one of the smaller British coalfields. It extends from the Point of Ayr in the north, along the Dee Estuary through Connah's Quay to Caergwrle in the south. A small part extends onto the Wirral i.e. English coast of the estuary at Neston which was the site of a coalmine for a period. The coal-bearing strata continue southwards of Caergwrle as the Denbighshire Coalfield. Together the two coalfields are known as the North Wales Coalfield.
The Cumberland Coalfield is a coalfield in Cumbria, north-west England. It extends from Whitehaven in the south to Maryport and Aspatria in the north.
The Leicestershire and South Derbyshire Coalfield in the English Midlands is one of the smaller British coalfields. The two areas are sometimes separately referred to as the South Derbyshire Coalfield and the Leicestershire Coalfield. All of the worked coal seams are contained within the Lower and Middle Coal Measures which are of Upper Carboniferous age.
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 Midgeholme Coalfield is a coalfield in Midgeholme, 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. The early workings have left a legacy of spoil heaps, bell pits, shafts and adits. There is no current coal production. 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. 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.
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 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 Bristol Coalfield is a geologically complex coalfield in the west of England. Comprising the coal-bearing rocks arranged around the Coalpit Heath Syncline and Kingsdown Anticline, it extends beneath the eastern parts of the city of Bristol and northwards through southern Gloucestershire. The coalfield is sometimes referred to together with the Somerset Coalfield, which lies to its south, as the Bristol and Somerset Coalfield. There are also two outlying coal-mining areas, the Severn Coalfield and the Nailsea Basin which are described below.
The South Staffordshire Coalfield is one of several coalfields in the English Midlands. It stretches for 25 miles / 40km from the Lickey Hills in the south to Rugeley in the north. The coalfield is around 10 miles / 16km wide; its eastern and western margins are fault-bounded. Numerous coal seams are recognised within the coalfield - the following coal seams are recognised within the Cannock section of the coalfield - an area sometimes separately referred to as the Cannock Coalfield;
Bradford Colliery was a coal mine in Bradford, Manchester, England. Although part of the Manchester Coalfield, the seams of the Bradford Coalfield correspond more closely to those of the Oldham Coalfield. The Bradford Coalfield is crossed by a number of fault lines, principally the Bradford Fault, which was reactivated by mining activity in the mid-1960s.
The geology of Tyne and Wear in northeast England largely consists of a suite of sedimentary rocks dating from the Carboniferous and Permian periods into which were intruded igneous dykes during the later Palaeogene Period.
This is a partial glossary of coal mining terminology commonly used in the coalfields of the United Kingdom. Some words were in use throughout the coalfields, some are historic and some are local to the different British coalfields.
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.
Coordinates: 55°09′32″N1°36′09″W / 55.1589°N 1.6026°W
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