Plumley is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...

, England, with a population of 643 at the 2011 census. There are two

public houses A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

, The Golden Pheasant and The Smoker. Plumley railway station is on the Mid-Cheshire Line and has regular services to

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

and

Chester Chester is a cathedral city and the county town of Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Dee, close to the English–Welsh border. With a population of 79,645 in 2011,"2011 Census results: People and Population Profile: Chester Loca ...

Plumley salt cavities

In 1949, following a study carried out in 1947, the ICI Company was commissioned by the

Ministry of Fuel and Power The Ministry of Power was a United Kingdom government ministry dealing with issues concerning energy. The Ministry of Power (then named Ministry of Fuel and Power) was created on 11 June 1942 from functions separated from the Board of Trade. ...

to develop a small salt cavity in the ICI Brinefield at Holford near Plumley. It was constructed by leaching out brine and designed to be able to hold approximately 5,000 cubic metres of

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

. It was filled with gas oil and regularly tested for any deterioration in the quality of the product. The location for the possible salt cavity site was ideal as it was close to the

Stanlow Refinery Stanlow Refinery is an oil refinery owned by Essar Energy in Ellesmere Port, North West England. Until 2011 it was owned by Shell UK. The refinery is situated on the south bank of the Manchester Ship Canal, which is used to transport seaborne o ...

, a number of existing petroleum storage depots and the government pipeline network. In 1951 the government decided to build 34 full-sized cavities. They were designed to hold approximately 1.2 million tons of petroleum product giving the site a capacity approximately six times greater than any of the existing government storage depots. The Ministry of Fuel and Power therefore purchased approximately 200 acres of suitable land from ICI near Plumley. ICI were contracted to excavate the salt cavities while

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

was contracted to carry out all the other associated engineering works. These were extensive and included all the necessary ancillary facilities, connecting the Plumley site to the existing pipeline system, to the Shell refinery at Stanlow and to a new storage depot to be built at

Goostrey Goostrey is an old farming village and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is located in open countryside, 14 miles NE of Crewe and 12 miles W of Ma ...

. Following the

Suez Crisis The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the Tripartite Aggression ( ar, العدوان الثلاثي, Al-ʿUdwān aṯ-Ṯulāṯiyy) in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel,Also known as the Suez War or 1956 Wa ...

of 1956, the Ministry of Power decided that the storage capacity at Plumley should be doubled. This was achieved by increasing the volume of each cavity. Work started in January 1959, but could only progress quite slowly as each cavity had to be emptied of product and then leached out and was not completed until July 1963. The government required that all oil refineries in this country had to keep 90 days' supply of crude oil in Great Britain. To meet that requirement, a number of oil companies stored crude oil in the salt cavities at Plumley. However, they had to enter into an exchange deal with Shell, as the only refinery that could easily use the crude oil was Shell Stanlow. There were also problems with operations at Plumley in the build-up of sludge from the crude oil in the cavities. It was found that sludge was building up at a rate that increased with the movement in and out of the cavities. Therefore the cavities hired by Shell and the most frequently used for the Stanlow refinery had the largest accumulation of sludge. A second problem with the cavities used for the storage of crude oil was that the extraction rate, at 7,200 cubic metres per day, was too slow. A system for the removal of fuel from the cavities at a much higher flow-rate of around 25,000 cubic metres per day had been installed as part of the original design. This involved the use of two water-pumping stations at

Acton Bridge Map of the civil parish of Acton Bridge within the former borough of Vale Royal Acton Bridge (formerly Acton) is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England. Located within the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester on the River Weav ...

on the

River Weaver The River Weaver is a river, navigable in its lower reaches, running in a curving route anti-clockwise across west Cheshire, northern England. Improvements to the river to make it navigable were authorised in 1720 and the work, which included ...

connected to Plumley by two water mains. This system, however, could only be used in an emergency as it would wash out some of the cavity until after two such operations it would fail. During the 1970s the use of the salt cavities declined. In 1975 and 1976 the

Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-rel ...

, at the insistence of the Treasury, considerably increased the charges for the use of Plumley. However, this resulted in three of the oil companies removing their product from the cavities leading to a dramatic drop in income. Around 1980 BNOC, who managed Plumley on behalf of the DoE, concluded that approximately £500,000 would need to be spent over a two-year period to keep it operational. In the early 1980s, as the DoE no longer required the storage of civil ground fuels for use in an emergency, the salt cavities were emptied of product, although they were retained as an asset for possible future usage.Government Pipeline and Storage System Capacity Study June 1984 p.5

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{{authority control Villages in Cheshire Civil parishes in Cheshire

Plumley salt cavities

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