New Mills
New Mills is a small town in Derbyshire, England 8 miles south-east of Stockport and 15 miles from Manchester. It lies at the confluence of the rivers Sett, close to the border of Cheshire; the town stands above the Torrs, a 70 feet deep gorge, cut through Woodhead Hill Sandstone of the Carboniferous period. It is on the north-western edge of England's first national park. New Mills has a population of 12,000, in a civil parish which includes the villages and hamlets of Whitle, Hague Bar, Brookbottom and most of Birch Vale. New Mills was first noted for coal mining, for cotton spinning and bleaching and calico printing. New Mills was served by three railway lines and the A6 trunk road. Redundant mills were bought up in the mid-twentieth century by a children's sweet manufacturer, Swizzels Matlow, famous for Love Hearts and Drumsticks. New Mills was a stronghold of Methodism. New Mills is in the area known as Bowden Middlecale, a grouping of ten hamlets; the name of New Mylne was given to it from a corn-mill, erected in 1391, near to the present Salem Mill on the River Sett in the hamlet of Ollersett.
This was adjacent to a convenient bridge over the Sett. By the late sixteenth century the name was applied to the group of houses. Coal mining was the first industry of the area, with up to 40 small pits and mines exploiting the Yard Seam; the climate, good construction stone and the availability of stable land by fast-flowing water was ideal for cotton spinning. Cotton mills and print-works were built in the Torrs Gorge from 1788. Dwellings were built on the sides of the gorge, sometimes with one home built on top of another, both being entered at their respective street levels. Examples still exist on Meal Street. By 1810, New Mills had nine cotton mills, plus at least three printworks. Pigot's Directory 1835 describes New Mills: NEW MILLS, an extensive hamlet, in the parish of Glossop, in the High Peak hundred, is 14 miles from Manchester, 6 from Chapel-en-le-Frith, 8 from Stockport, it is pleasantly situate on the borders of Cheshire. The factories are in a great measure hidden from public view in passing through the village, being built at the foot of the stream, under high towering rocks.
Good house coal, as well as other kinds for the purposes of machinery, is obtained near to the village, the top bed strata running from sixteen to twenty inches thick. The village is built chiefly upon a stone quarry, but the soil in many parts is fertile, producing good crops of wheat and potatoes. A second group of'later' mills formed by the newly opened Peak Forest Canal in Newtown, a hamlet 800 m away on the other side of the Goyt in what was the parish of Disley in Cheshire; these mills and houses merged into New Mills. The soft iron-free water was suitable for finishing and printing. With the advent of steam, the growth of the canal network to transport raw cotton and the finished product, bigger mills were built and the smaller isolated rural mills were no longer competitive. By 1846, most of New Mills' mills had stopped spinning; the small mills moved out of cotton. Torr Vale Mill had added a weaving shed in 1836, moved into producing towelling; the commercial method of calico printing using engraved rollers was invented in 1821 in New Mills.
John Potts of Potts and Potts used a copper-engraved master to produce rollers to transfer the inks. Before the construction of the high-level bridges the Torrs was a major obstacle; the first bridge to be constructed was the Queens Bridge on Church Road. The Union Road bridge was built in 1884; the new road was named after the'union' of the two halves of the town. The first station in New Mills was at Newtown, on the Stockport and Whaley Bridge Railway; this followed the line of the Peak Forest Canal staying safely away from the Torrs. The Sheffield and Midland Railway Companies' Committee company built two viaducts across the Goyt: one for a line to New Mills Central that opened in 1864, one for the fast line through the Disley Tunnel which opened in 1904. Cotton continued to be worked at Torr Vale Mill until 2000, giving the mill over two hundred years of service. In the great storm of June 1872, Grove Mill and Torr Vale weir were destroyed; the River Goyt at about two o’clock a.m. on Wednesday was from 12ft to 14ft above its usual height...
At New Mills, where the Goyt is joined by the River Kinder, extensive damage was done to property. The paper works of Messrs. Schlosser and Co. were damaged upwards of £1,500 as two blocks of buildings were washed away – one portion contained a large quantity of paper. The works of Mr. W. S. Lowe sufferd the damage being estimated at £300. Two strong stone weirs were washed away and two bridges. – Manchester Times This was minor compared with events at Whaley Bridge, where Toddbrook Reservoir was overtopped and another reservoir known as
Cat and Fiddle Road
The Cat and Fiddle is a road in England between Buxton and Macclesfield, named after the Cat and Fiddle Inn public house at its summit. Formed by parts of the A537, A54 and A53, it is famous for its scenic views across the Greater Manchester conurbation, the Peak District National Park and the Cheshire Plain, for its many bends, it is popular with motorcyclists, is classed as the most dangerous road in the UK. The road can be considered to start in Buxton at the junction of the A53 and A5004 Long Hill road just north of the Buxton Opera House, it follows the A53 through the western outskirts of Buxton until a right turn onto the A54 at Ladmanlow. It climbs in a series of sharp bends onto the flat moorland of Goyt’s Moss, where it runs as the A537 in a straight line until reaching the Cat and Fiddle Inn at an altitude of 1,690 feet. From the Cat and Fiddle Inn it descends to Macclesfield via a continuous series of sharp, blind, bends, it is one of only two roads into Macclesfield from the east, thus carries long-distance as well as local traffic, including heavy goods vehicles.
It carries tourist traffic into the Peak District National Park, including cyclists and walkers. It is part of the "Cat and Fiddle – Long Hill – Highwayman" triangle, attractive to motorcyclists because of the frequency and severity of the bends. Given this mixture of usage, the number and sharpness of the bends and the frequent straying livestock on the road, a great deal of caution is needed. Bad winter weather can make the road more hazardous; the Cat and Fiddle Road was used as part of the route of the third stage of the 2016 Tour of Britain from Congleton to Tatton Park, forming the longest and highest climb of that year's race. As a result of the many injuries and fatalities the speed limit on the section between Macclesfield and the Cat and Fiddle Inn has been reduced to 50 mph from the national 60 mph limit; the road is patrolled by unmarked police cars and motorcycles, a mobile speed camera van is used most weekends during the summer. A police aircraft is used in conjunction with these to enforce the speed limit.
The road was named. The single-carriageway route was the location of 21 fatal and serious crashes, was rated in the EuroRAP report as Black, the highest risk rating; this was in spite of a number of countermeasures installed by the road authority, including motorcycle-friendly barriers. The Foundation attributed this high number of accidents to road user behaviour. Cheshire County Council pointed the finger at motorcyclists' behaviour: "The fact is that it’s an attractive road to motorcyclists – they see it as a challenge to ride with its hairpin bends, limited views, downhill descent and uphill ascent; the thing that angers us most is not the fact that it’s dangerous, but that there are a group of people on that road who knowingly push the boundaries. We have tried to get the message across, that it is the emergency services that have to pick these people up off the road and have the duty of telling their families that they have killed themselves." Having spent £500,000 on a number of safety measures, in January 2009 it was revealed that Cheshire Council, on behalf of Cheshire Safer Roads Partnership and Derbyshire Partnership for Road Safety, intended to spend a further £1.2 million on installing average-speed cameras along this road.
Installation of these cameras began in February 2010. However, the initial operation of the cameras did not go smoothly, because along the full route of the cameras' operation there are a number of shortcuts which have the full national speed, decrease the overall distance of the route; these two factors, when combined, can give inaccurate readings from the speed cameras. The average-speed camera scheme is a joint initiative between the Cheshire Safer Roads Partnership and Derbyshire Road Safety Partnership and the Department for Transport, enables the average speed of vehicles along the 50 mph route to be measured between any two cameras. Cameras will be rear-facing. Lee Murphy, Cheshire Safer Roads Partnership manager, said: "Major resources have been committed to the Cat and Fiddle road since 2000, including reducing the speed limit, high-friction surfacing, high-visibility warning signs, red warnings painted on the road, motorcycle-friendly safety barriers, enforcement signs, carriageway widening, mobile safety cameras and police operations.
Without police costs, we estimate that more than £500,000 has been spent on the road in Cheshire alone. Despite all this work, casualties remain high." Of the 264 casualties on the road since 2001 70% of those killed or injured were motorcyclists, the main causes being poor cornering/manoeuvring, exceeding the speed limit, failing to judge another vehicle’s speed/distance. "The information and statistics show that it is riding behaviour not the road condition that causes the majority of collisions. We don’t have a problem with other road users not seeing bikes, because the majority of collisions are single vehicles," added Murphy; the Cat and Fiddle again topped the list in the 2010 report, which claimed that fatalities on the road rose from 15 in the three years to 2005 to 34 between 2006 and 2008. However, following the introduction of further safety measures including improv
Glossop
Glossop is a market town in the High Peak, England, about 15 miles east of Manchester, 24 miles west of Sheffield and 32 miles north of the county town, Matlock. Glossop is near Derbyshire's county borders with Cheshire, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, it is between 150 and 300 metres above mean sea level, lies just outside the Peak District National Park. The name Glossop refers to the small hamlet that gave its name to an ancient parish recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, the manor given by William I of England to William Peverel. A municipal borough was created in 1866, the unparished urban area within two local government wards; the area now known as Glossop approximates to the villages that used to be called Glossopdale, on the lands of the Duke of Norfolk. A centre of wool processing, Glossop expanded in the late 18th century when it specialised in the production and printing of calico, a coarse cotton, became a mill town with many chapels and churches, its fortunes tied to the cotton industry.
Architecturally, the area is dominated by buildings constructed of the local sandstone. There remain the Dinting railway viaduct. Glossop has transport links to Manchester; the name Glossop is thought to be of Anglo-Saxon origin, named during the Angles' settlement in the 7th century, derived from Glott's Hop – where hop could mean a valley, a small valley in a larger valley system, or a piece of land enclosed by marshes and Glott was a chieftain's name. Because of its size and location, Glossop had many definitions; the village of Glossop is now called Old Glossop. Howard Town and Milltown gained importance, they were named New Town and Glossop. Local government reorganisations had caused the Glossopdale villages to be promoted to a municipal borough and have that status removed. Land has been added to Glossop and other lands removed. From a small settlement it became an ancient parish, a manor, a borough, a township. Two county divisions in High Peak Borough, have Glossop as part of their names.
There is evidence of a Bronze Age burial site on Shire Hill and other prehistoric remains at Torside. The Romans arrived in 78 AD. At that time, the area was within the territory of the Brigantes tribe, whose main base was in Yorkshire. In the late 1st century the Romans built a fort, Ardotalia, on high ground above the river in present-day Gamesley; the site of this fort was rediscovered in 1771 by John Watson. It subsequently acquired the name Melandra Castle; the extensive site has been excavated, revealing a shrine and the fort headquarters. The area has been landscaped to provide picnic areas. King William I awarded the manor of Glossop to William Peveril, who began construction of Glossop Castle, but the entire estate was confiscated. In 1157 King Henry II gave the manor of Glossop to Basingwerk Abbey, they gained a market charter for Glossop in 1290, one for Charlesworth in 1328. In 1433, the monks leased all of Glossopdale to the Talbot family Earls of Shrewsbury. In 1494, an illegitimate son of the family, Dr John Talbot, was appointed vicar of Glossop.
He founded a school, paved the packhorse route over the moors. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537 the manor of Glossop was given to the Talbot family. In 1606 it came into the ownership of the Howard family, the Dukes of Norfolk, who held it for the next 300 years. Glossop was given to the second son of the family; the land was too wet and cold to be used for wheat but was ideal for the hardy Pennine sheep, so agriculture was predominantly pastoral. Most of the land was owned by the Howards and was leasehold and it was only in Whitfield that there was any freehold land; the few houses were solid, built of the local stone, allowed for the development of home industries such as wool spinning and weaving. The medieval economy was based on sheep pasture and the production of wool by farmers who were tenants of the Abbot of Basingwerk and the Talbot family. During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century Glossop became a centre for cotton spinning. A good transport network between Liverpool and Glossop brought in imported cotton, spun by a labour force with wool spinning skills.
The climate of Glossopdale provided abundant soft water, used to power mills and finish the cloth, gave the humidity necessary to spin cotton under tension. Initial investment was provided by the Dukes of Norfolk. By 1740, cotton in an unspun form had been introduced to make lighter cloths; the first mills in Glossop were woollen mills. In 1774, Richard Arkwright opened a mill at Cromford, he patented machines for spinning cotton and carding. In 1785, his patents expired and many people copied Arkwright's system and his patents, exemplified by the Derwent Valley Mills. By 1788 there were over 200 Arkwright-type mills in Britain. At the same time there were 17 cotton mills in Derbyshire, principally in Glossop. By 1831 there were at least 30 mills in Glossopdale; the mill owners were local men: the Wagstaffs and Hadfields were freeholders from Whitfield. The Sidebottoms were from Hadfield, the Thornleys were carpenters and John Bennet and John Robinson were clothiers. John Wood of Marsden came from Manchester in 1819 and bought existing woollen mills which he expanded.
These were the Howard Town mills. Francis Sumner was a Catholic whose family had
Reservoir
A reservoir is, most an enlarged natural or artificial lake, pond or impoundment created using a dam or lock to store water. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of water, interrupting a watercourse to form an embayment within it, through excavation, or building any number of retaining walls or levees. Defined as a storage space for fluids, reservoirs may hold gasses, including hydrocarbons. Tank reservoirs elevated, or buried tanks. Tank reservoirs for water are called cisterns. Most underground reservoirs are used to store liquids, principally either water or petroleum, below ground. Reservoir is most an enlarged natural or artificial lake. A dam constructed in a valley relies on the natural topography to provide most of the basin of the reservoir. Dams are located at a narrow part of a valley downstream of a natural basin; the valley sides act as natural walls, with the dam located at the narrowest practical point to provide strength and the lowest cost of construction.
In many reservoir construction projects, people have to be moved and re-housed, historical artifacts moved or rare environments relocated. Examples include the temples of Abu Simbel, the relocation of the village of Capel Celyn during the construction of Llyn Celyn, the relocation of Borgo San Pietro of Petrella Salto during the construction of Lake Salto. Construction of a reservoir in a valley will need the river to be diverted during part of the build through a temporary tunnel or by-pass channel. In hilly regions, reservoirs are constructed by enlarging existing lakes. Sometimes in such reservoirs, the new top water level exceeds the watershed height on one or more of the feeder streams such as at Llyn Clywedog in Mid Wales. In such cases additional side dams are required to contain the reservoir. Where the topography is poorly suited to a single large reservoir, a number of smaller reservoirs may be constructed in a chain, as in the River Taff valley where the Llwyn-on, Cantref and Beacons Reservoirs form a chain up the valley.
Coastal reservoirs are fresh water storage reservoirs located on the sea coast near the river mouth to store the flood water of a river. As the land based reservoir construction is fraught with substantial land submergence, coastal reservoir is preferred economically and technically since it does not use scarce land area. Many coastal reservoirs were constructed in Europe. Saemanguem in South Korea, Marina Barrage in Singapore and Plover Cove in China, etc are few existing coastal reservoirs. Where water is pumped or siphoned from a river of variable quality or size, bank-side reservoirs may be built to store the water; such reservoirs are formed by excavation and by building a complete encircling bund or embankment, which may exceed 6 km in circumference. Both the floor of the reservoir and the bund must have an impermeable lining or core: these were made of puddled clay, but this has been superseded by the modern use of rolled clay; the water stored in such reservoirs may stay there for several months, during which time normal biological processes may reduce many contaminants and eliminate any turbidity.
The use of bank-side reservoirs allows water abstraction to be stopped for some time, when the river is unacceptably polluted or when flow conditions are low due to drought. The London water supply system is one example of the use of bank-side storage: the water is taken from the River Thames and River Lee. Service reservoirs store treated potable water close to the point of distribution. Many service reservoirs are constructed as water towers as elevated structures on concrete pillars where the landscape is flat. Other service reservoirs can be entirely underground in more hilly or mountainous country. In the United Kingdom, Thames Water has many underground reservoirs, sometimes called cisterns, built in the 1800s, most of which are lined with brick. A good example is the Honor Oak Reservoir in London, constructed between 1901 and 1909; when it was completed it was said to be the largest brick built underground reservoir in the world and it is still one of the largest in Europe. This reservoir now forms part of the southern extension of the Thames Water Ring Main.
The top of the reservoir is now used by the Aquarius Golf Club. Service reservoirs perform several functions, including ensuring sufficient head of water in the water distribution system and providing water capacity to out peak demand from consumers, enabling the treatment plant to run at optimum efficiency. Large service reservoirs can be managed to reduce the cost of pumping, by refilling the reservoir at times of day when energy costs are low. Circa 3 000 BC, the craters of extinct volcanoes in Arabia were used as reservoirs by farmers for their irrigation water. Dry climate and water scarcity in India led to early development of stepwells and water resource management techniques, including the building of a reservoir at Girnar in 3000 BC. Artificial lakes dating to the 5th century BC have been found in ancient Greece; the artificial Bhojsagar lake in present-day Madhya Pradesh state of India, constructed in the 11th century, covered 650 square kilometres. In Sri Lanka large reservoirs were created by ancient Sinhalese kings in order to save the water for irrigation.
The famous Sri Lankan king Pa
Etherow Country Park
Etherow Country Park is situated at Compstall, between Marple Bridge and Romiley, in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester. It is the starting point of the Goyt Way, it was one of England's first country parks. It was an industrial area incorporating a mine, a mill and a mill pond; the River Etherow is the source for the mill pond. With the decline of industry, the mill pond and park have become a nature reserve and a place for people to spend time walking and taking in the peaceful surroundings. Compstall Nature Reserve is a 12.8-hectare region of the park, designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The area was designated an SSSI in 1977 for its biological interest, in particular its wide range of habitats including open water, tall fen, reed swamp and mixed deciduous woodland; the site is of considerable ornithological interest with water rail, an uncommon species, having been recorded. Etherow Country Park has many local groups associated with it. Etherow Country Park Sailing Club is a small sailing club.
The Friends of Etherow are a small local community group. Map of Compstall Nature Reserve SSSI Etherow Country Park website
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. Anglesey, Wales, is the largest island in the Irish Sea; the second in size is the Isle of Man and the sea may but be referred to as the Manx Sea. The Irish Sea is of significant economic importance to regional trade and transport, power generation in the form of wind power and nuclear power plants. Annual traffic between Great Britain and Ireland amounts to over 12 million passengers and 17 million tonnes of traded goods; the Irish Sea is connected to the North Atlantic at both its southern ends. To the north, the connection is through the North Channel between Scotland and Northern Ireland and the Malin Sea; the southern end is linked to the Atlantic through the St George's Channel between Ireland and Pembrokeshire, the Celtic Sea. It is composed of a deeper channel about 190 miles long and 20–30 miles wide on its western side and shallower bays to the east; the western channel's depth ranges from 80 metres up to 275 m in the Beaufort's Dyke in the North Channel.
Cardigan Bay in the south, the waters to the east of the Isle of Man, are less than 50 m deep. With a total water volume of 2,430 km3 and a surface area of 47,000 km2, 80% is to the west of the Isle of Man; the largest sandbanks are the Bahama and King William Banks to the east and north of the Isle of Man and the Kish Bank, Codling Bank, Arklow Bank and Blackwater Bank near the coast of Ireland. The Irish Sea, at its greatest width, narrows to 47 miles; the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Irish Sea as follows, On the North. The Southern limit of the Inner Seas off the West Coast of Scotland, defined as a line joining the South extreme of the Mull of Galloway in Scotland and Ballyquintin Point in Northern Ireland. On the South. A line joining St. David's Head in Wales to Carnsore Point in Ireland; the Irish Sea has undergone a series of dramatic changes over the last 20,000 years as the last glacial period ended and was replaced by warmer conditions. At the height of the glaciation, the central part of the modern sea was a long freshwater lake.
As the ice retreated 10,000 years ago, the lake reconnected to the sea. Ireland has no bridge connection to Great Britain. Northern Ireland ports handle 10 million tonnes of goods trade with the rest of the United Kingdom annually; the Port of Liverpool handles 734 thousand passengers a year. Holyhead port handles most of the passenger traffic from Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ports, as well as 3.3 million tonnes of freight. Ports in the Republic handle 3,600,000 travellers crossing the sea each year, amounting to 92% of all Irish Sea travel. Ferry connections from Wales to Ireland across the Irish Sea include Fishguard Harbour and Pembroke to Rosslare, Holyhead to Dún Laoghaire and Holyhead to Dublin. From Scotland, Cairnryan connects with both Larne. There is a connection between Liverpool and Belfast via the Isle of Man or direct from Birkenhead; the world's largest car ferry, Ulysses, is operated by Irish Ferries on the Dublin Port–Holyhead route. "Irish Sea" is the name of one of the BBC's Shipping Forecast areas defined by the coordinates: 54°50′N 05°05′W 54°45′N 05°45′W 52°30′N 06°15′W 52°00′N 05°05′WTransport for Wales Rail, Iarnród Éireann, Irish Ferries, Stena Line, Northern Ireland Railways, Stena Line and Abellio ScotRail promote SailRail with through rail tickets for the train and the ferry.
The Caernarfon Bay basin contains up to 7 cubic kilometres of Permian and Triassic syn-rift sediments in an asymmetrical graben, bounded to the north and south by Lower Paleozoic massifs. Only two exploration wells have been drilled so far, there remain numerous undrilled targets in tilted fault block plays; as in the East Irish Sea Basin, the principal target reservoir is the Lower Triassic, Sherwood Sandstone, top-sealed by younger Triassic mudstones and evaporites. Wells in the Irish Sector to the west have demonstrated that pre-rift, Westphalian coal measures are excellent hydrocarbon source rocks, are at peak maturity for gas generation. Seismic profiles image these strata continuing beneath a basal Permian unconformity into at least the western part of the Caernarfon Bay Basin; the timing of gas generation presents the greatest exploration risk. Maximum burial of, primary gas migration from, the source rocks could have terminated as early as the Jurassic, whereas many of the tilted fault blocks were reactivated or created during Paleogene inversion of the basin.
However, it is possible that a secondary gas charge occurred during regional heating associated with intrusion of Paleogene dykes, such as those that crop out nearby on the coastline of north Wales. (Floodpage et al
Goyt Way
The Goyt Way is a 10-mile walking route from Etherow Country Park, Greater Manchester, to Whaley Bridge, following the valley of the River Goyt. It is part of the longer Midshires Way; the path is waymarked, intersects with the Cheshire Ring Canal Walk and the Peak District Boundary Walk. It passes through the following settlements: Compstall, Strines, Hague Bar, New Mills and Furness Vale. In its latter stages, it follows the towpath of the Peak Forest Canal to its terminus at Whaley Bridge
