Irwell Valley
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Irwell Valley
The Irwell Valley in North West England extends from the Forest of Rossendale through the cities of Salford and Manchester. The River Irwell runs through the valley, along with the River Croal. Geology Shallow seas covered most of south-east Lancashire in the Upper Carboniferous period when deposits of mud and sand were laid down. These later became beds of shales and sandstones alternating with layers of gritstone. There are also beds of New Red Sandstone and Manchester Marls. The glaciers of the Pleistocene epoch further shaped the landscape and then retreated, leaving behind deposits of sand, pebbles and boulder clay that formed the fluvioglacial ridges of the Irwell Valley. Ashclough, a 5.8 hectare (14.3 acre) site which comprises the steep banks of the river between Prestolee and Little Lever, has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of its geological interest, primarily because it is the best site in the area displaying Ashcough Marine Ba ...
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North West England
North West England is one of nine official regions of England and consists of the ceremonial counties of England, administrative counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The North West had a population of 7,052,000 in 2011. It is the Countries of the United Kingdom by population, third-most-populated region in the United Kingdom, after the South East England, South East and Greater London. The largest settlements are Manchester and Liverpool. Subdivisions The official Regions of England, region consists of the following Subdivisions of England, subdivisions: After abolition of the Greater Manchester and Merseyside County Councils in 1986, power was transferred to the metropolitan boroughs, making them equivalent to unitary authorities. In April 2011, Greater Manchester gained a top-tier administrative body in the form of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which means the 10 Greater Manchester boroughs are once again second-ti ...
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Boulder Clay
Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists of stiff, hard, pulverized clay or rock flour. Boulder clay is also know as either known as drift clay; till; unstratified drift, geschiebelehm (German); argile á blocaux (French); and keileem (Dutch).Charlesworth, J. K., 1957. ''Chap 18, Boulder Clay''. In ''The Quaternary Era, with Special Reference to its Glaciation''. v. 1, London, United Kingdom, Edward Arnold, p. 376-388.Neuendorf, K.K.E., J.P. Mehl, Jr., and J.A. Jackson, eds. (2005) ''Glossary of Geology'' (5th ed.). Alexandria, Virginia, American Geological Institute. 779 pp. The term ''boulder clay'' is infreqently used for gravelly sedimentary deposits of nonglacial origin. These deposits include submarine slump and slide deposits along continental margins,Reineck, H.E. and Si ...
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Nob End
Nob End is the site of a former waste tip which is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest and Local Nature Reserve near Little Lever and Kearsley, in Greater Manchester, England. History Standing at the confluence of the River Irwell and River Croal the site was used around 1850-70 as a tip for toxic alkaline waste from the production of sodium carbonate (soda ash) by the Leblanc process. The waste, known as ' galligu', was a blue sludge (from reduced iron compounds) dominated by calcium sulphide and smelling of bad eggs. The surface of the waste has since weathered down to calcium carbonate, and calcicolous vegetation has colonised the site. As natural limestone grassland does not occur in Greater Manchester, many of the species found are rare in the county. The 8.8 hectare (21.7 acres)site became a SSSI in 1988, and a Local Nature Reserve in 2000. In 1936 a major breach in the now defunct Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal occurred east of the Nob End locks; it has ne ...
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Leblanc Process
The Leblanc process (pronounced leh-blaank) was an early industrial process for making ''soda ash'' (sodium carbonate) used throughout the 19th century, named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc. It involved two stages: making sodium sulfate from sodium chloride, followed by reacting the sodium sulfate with coal and calcium carbonate to make sodium carbonate. The process gradually became obsolete after the development of the Solvay process. Background Soda ash (sodium carbonate) and potash (potassium carbonate), collectively termed ''alkali'', are vital chemicals in the glass, textile, soap, and paper industries. The traditional source of alkali in western Europe had been potash obtained from wood ashes. However, by the 13th century, deforestation had rendered this means of production uneconomical, and alkali had to be imported. Potash was imported from North America, Scandinavia, and Russia, where large forests still stood. Soda ash was imported from Spain and the Canary I ...
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Sewage Treatment
Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding environment or an intended reuse application, thereby preventing water pollution from raw sewage discharges. Sewage contains wastewater from households and businesses and possibly pre-treated industrial wastewater. There are a high number of sewage treatment processes to choose from. These can range from decentralized systems (including on-site treatment systems) to large centralized systems involving a network of pipes and pump stations (called sewerage) which convey the sewage to a treatment plant. For cities that have a combined sewer, the sewers will also carry urban runoff (stormwater) to the sewage treatment plant. Sewage treatment often involves two main stages, called primary and secondary treatment, while advanced treatment also incor ...
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Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal
The Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal is a disused canal in Greater Manchester, England, built to link Bolton and Bury with Manchester. The canal, when fully opened, was long. It was accessed via a junction with the River Irwell in Salford. Seventeen locks were required to climb to the summit as it passed through Pendleton, heading northwest to Prestolee before it split northwest to Bolton and northeast to Bury. Between Bolton and Bury the canal was level and required no locks. Six aqueducts were built to allow the canal to cross the rivers Irwell and Tonge and several minor roads. The canal was commissioned in 1791 by local landowners and businessmen and built between 1791 and 1808, during the Golden Age of canal building, at a cost of £127,700 (£ today). Originally designed for narrow gauge boats, during its construction the canal was altered into a broad gauge canal to allow an ultimately unrealised connection with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The canal company la ...
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Manchester Ship Canal
The Manchester Ship Canal is a inland waterway in the North West of England linking Manchester to the Irish Sea. Starting at the Mersey Estuary at Eastham, near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Several sets of locks lift vessels about to the canal's terminus in Manchester. Landmarks along its route include the Barton Swing Aqueduct, the world's only swing aqueduct, and Trafford Park, the world's first planned industrial estate and still the largest in Europe. The rivers Mersey and Irwell were first made navigable in the early 18th century. Goods were also transported on the Runcorn extension of the Bridgewater Canal (from 1776) and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (from 1830), but by the late 19th century the Mersey and Irwell Navigation had fallen into disrepair and was often unusable. In addition, Manchester's business community viewed the cha ...
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Lever Bank Bleach Works
Lever Bank Bleach Works was a Bleach Works at Ladyshore, near Little Lever, Bolton. The works was owned by Thomas Ridgway & Sons. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would appear to be a direct descendant of this family. Location The works was located between the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal to the north, and the River Irwell to the south, in the area known as Ladyshore in the Irwell Valley. Accessed from Ladyshore Bridge, over the canal, the cobbled pathway is still very much evident. Stanchions across the river still stand although the bridge/pipework they supported no longer exists. A weir was built on the nearby River Irwell The River Irwell ( ) is a tributary of the River Mersey in north west England. It rises at Irwell Springs on Deerplay Moor, approximately north of Bacup and flows southwards for to meet the Mersey near Irlam. The Irwell marks the boundary be ... and water diverted through a small channel into a reservoir. High quality stone walls a ...
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Clifton, Greater Manchester
Clifton is a suburb of Swinton in the City of Salford in Greater Manchester, England. It lies along the edge of Irwell Valley in the north of the City of Salford. Historically in Lancashire, it was a centre for coal mining, and once formed part of the Municipal Borough of Swinton and Pendlebury. History Clifton is derived from the Old English ''clif'' and ''tun'', and means the "settlement near a cliff, slope or riverbank". Clifton was mentioned in the Pipe Roll of 1183–84. Coal mining Clifton Hall Colliery was west of Lumns Lane, on the site now occupied by a domestic refuse and recycling site run by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority. The colliery was operating by 1820, and its tramway is shown on a parliamentary plan from 1830 and an 1845 map. It closed in 1929. On 18 June 1885, an underground explosion at the colliery killed 178 men and boys. The inquest and the official report concluded that explosion was caused by firedamp igniting on contact with a cand ...
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Wet Earth Colliery
Wet Earth Colliery was a coal mine located on the Manchester Coalfield, in Clifton, Greater Manchester. The colliery site is now the location of Clifton Country Park. The colliery has a unique place in British coal mining history; apart from being one of the earliest pits in the country, it is the place where engineer James Brindley made water run uphill. Geology The colliery is situated in the valley of the River Irwell which flows north to south along the Pendleton Fault. Many other coal mines were situated on this major fault which threw up the underlying Carboniferous coal measures by some 1,100 yards making them accessible for mining from early times. To the east of the fault is the red Triassic sandstone, to the west are the coal measures, which in places outcrop at surface. History Early mining The area around Nob End in Kearsley, a few hundred yards to the north of the Wet Earth Colliery shows evidence of early bell pit working and small ladder pits. The first ...
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Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and a result was an unprecedented rise in population and in the rate of population growth. Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leadi ...
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