Virtual Field Trips: Introduction Viewing the Carbon Landscape through the lens of the Roundview
Introduction to the Landscape
The Carbon Landscape encompasses great swathes of land to the West and the North West of Manchester, consisting of the Wigan Flashes, the Mosslands and, to the south, the Wetlands. Identified by Lancashire Wildlife Trust in a series of major conservation and management projects, the broad landscape plays an invaluable role in sustaining a variety of environments across the region.
These virtual field trips draw in large part on the Carbon Landscape project and further work undertaken by Dr Joanne Tippett and other stakeholders.
This introduction will tell you a little about the Carbon Landscape and surrounds, hopefully interesting you enough to take one of the three "field trips". These can either be enjoyed online, or you can visit the area yourself and enjoy the suggested route in person.
The Wigan Flashes arose as a result of the exploitation of fossilised carbon - coal! Extensive subterranean mining, using the pillar and stall and, latterly, long wall mining techniques resulted in widespread subsidence over broad areas to the south-east of Wigan. As these areas settled, water accumulated in a series of large, relatively flat lakes and ponds - the Wigan Flashes.
The Mosslands are areas of peat bog - specifically lowland blanket bog. Initially many tens of metres deep, the peat landscape has been extensively modified over the last two centuries or more. Peat cutting for fuel and use as a growing medium has been extensive, resulting in some places in the complete destruction of once valuable and irreplaceable landscapes. In other places, the mosses have been used for agriculture - necessitating extensive drainage works, and even as rubbish dumps!
The Wetlands are the southern-most component of the Carbon Landscape. Adjacent to the River Mersey and, in many places, the Manchester Ship Canal, this is a wild, open landscape of reed beds, shallow marshes, willow thickets and backwaters. The wetlands provide an invaluable corridor for nature at all scales; from migrating deer to the smallest invertebrates, the wetlands provide shelter, sustenance, and connectivity.
This virtual field trip will take you on a journey through the Carbon Landscape, looking at some of the pressures being placed upon the various components, as well as some of the work being done to restore, repair and reshape the damaged habitats.
Mining and the Wigan Flashes
Coal mining has taken place in the Greater Manchester area for centuries. Initially, coal was won through surface workings, and shallow bell-pits, nearer the city centre and the Pennine hills. As these shallow coal deposits or "coal measures" were worked out, deeper mines were sunk to exploit the lower strata. Some of these mines, for example those at Worsley, were accessed by drifts or adits - horizontal or sloped tunnels leading from the surface to the coal seams. Other mines used vertical shafts to penetrate the depths of the earth, reaching tens or even hundreds of metres down into the darkness.
Deep coal mining came to the Wigan area at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The 1830s Ordnance Survey maps show a landscape that is still very rural in appearance. Mining has begun, and railways have started to criss-cross the landscape, but numerous fields still dominate.
By the 1880s, the landscape has become increasingly impacted. Large areas of mining spoil now cover previously untouched agricultural land. The railways have expanded in what can only really be described as a sprawl. And subsidence from deep mining has led to the creation of several "flashes" at Ince, Plank Lane, Fir Lane, and more. The villages have, in many places, conjoined or expanded into towns. Other industrial structures, such as factories and workshops, are beginning to appear.
Although individual collieries opened and closed throughout the C19th and C20th, slowly the number of working mines declined. The last operating pit, at Bickershaw, closed in the early 1990s. More information about the Wigan coalfields can be found online at the excellent Northern Mining Research Society website. For those who can, the excellent Lancashire Mining Museum at Astley is well worth a visit. And this interesting YouTube video (original filmed in 1911) entitled “A day in the life of a Wigan coal miner” is definitely worth a watch!
The modern-day map shows a post-industrial landscape, heavily modified and impacted by the former exploitation of the coal measures. The multiple flashes indicate the extreme subsidence that has taken place - and also serve as an aerial visual reminder of where the coal was extracted. Villages have grown and merged, forming some of the major towns of the west Lancashire plains, including Wigan, Warrington and Leigh.
The Mosses and Peat Rooms
Long before coal became the dominant fossil-fuel, peat was taken from the various mosses to be used as fuel. Occasionally peat was taken to improve the organic content of poor soils, though more often mosses were artificially drained to allow for arable and pastoral agriculture. In some cases, drained mosses have been used as large-scale middens for the dumping of urban waste - especially human and domesticated animal excrement.
The mosses surrounding Manchester were, until the industrial revolution, a fragile yet stable environment consisting of multiple Blanket Bogs. Formed since the last ice-age ended, the bogs are comprised of a variety of vegetation, but predominantly sphagnum moss (living and decaying anaerobically). Laid down over millennia, the bogs slowly "grew" in height/depth, to become vast, sponge-like deposits of sodden peat sometimes over 20 metres deep. This great blog by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust explains in more detail how mosses are formed.
Because blanket bogs are formed by anaerobic decomposition (i.e. rotting, but without oxygen), the process of decay takes an extremely log time. Literally millennia. This has two very obvious impacts: firstly, anything within the blanket bog will take thousands of years to break down. And, secondly, adding to, repairing or recreating a bog also takes thousands of years.
For example, the remains of trees that existed within the bog will be preserved in a semi-fossilised or petrified form for ages. This well-preserved tree stump, possibly showing signs of cutting with stone axes, can be seen at Little Wood Moss.
And any person or creature unfortunate enough to end up in the bog will also be preserved through the ages in the anaerobic environment.
"Worsley Man", whose head can be seen in the image to the right, was unfortunate enough to be the subject of an iron-age ritualistic human sacrifice. Garrotted, bashed over the head, and ultimately decapitated, this unfortunate person was thrown into the bog at Astley Moss for reasons at which we can now only guess. The remains of this sacrificed person are now housed at the Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester.
Chapter 7 of the fascinating book Bog Bodies (Giles, 2020) tells the story of the discovery and analysis of Worsley Man and some of the other remains discovered in peat bogs across the UK.
In recent decades, the extraction of peat from mosses and bogs has become a heavily industrialised process.
Large swathes of land are aggressively drained, to allow for vehicular access, and earth-moving machinery is utilised to remove the dried peat in huge volumes.
Through the excessive draining, and then the removal of peat material, the mosses can quickly loose tens of metres of height. Entire horizons and viewsheds will be altered; indeed the drainage of Carrington Moss, for example, allowed for sight between two villages where previously the bog had formed a mound-like hill in between.
Prior to the invention of modern machinery, peat was cut from bogs in long, thin strips of land known as "peat rooms". Peat would be cut in blocks or turves from the bog, and placed on the surface to dry out for later burning as a fuel source.
As technologies slowly developed, the mosses would have been increasingly drained to allow peat working. Not to the same extent as post-industrial revolution practices, but still sufficiently drained to allow access while also greatly harming the existing surface and sub-surface, anaerobic habitats.
Lindow Moss, the resting place of another of the Bog Bodies and the scene of a famous "bog burst" in the 1700s, when a storm caused the bog to flood catastrophically, carving a new channel for the river exiting the bog to the NNW, is clearly shown in the LIDAR imagery below. This image, captured as part of the Landscape Character Assessment process for parts of East Cheshire, reveals the historic peat rooms in stunning detail.
Possibly one of the most impacted, yet least visited mosses around Manchester is Carrington Moss. Over the last few centuries, the landscape at Carrington has been treated with disdain by multiple stakeholders.
Prior to the industrial revolution, Carrington Moss was retained by the landowner as an area for hunting and wildfowling. Some rough grazing took place around the edges of the moss, but overall this was a quiet area, more at home to wildlife than humans.
As can be seen in the 1880s Ordnance Survey maps (left), by the later Victorian era roads and drainage were beginning to be laid out on the moss, and the Wigan - Altrincham - Stockport railway (part of the Cheshire Lines Committee network) had been built.
Moving forward to the 1890s, the human impact on the mosses is becoming quite drastic. Multiple drainage channels, access roads, and even narrow-gauge 'tramways' can be seen on the map. The moss in no way appears a natural landscape now.
However, the map only shows infrastructure; it does not describe use... By this time, the cities of Salford and Manchester were rapidly, almost exponentially, expanding every year. And with more people, more industry, more domestic animals, comes more waste. Lots and lots of waste.
Euphemistically termed 'night soil', Carrington Moss became the dumping ground for tens of thousands of tonnes of human excrement and animal dung. In an orderly manner, the mosses were drained and the peat 'improved' by the addition of this organic 'fertiliser' (or, so the authorities of the day saw it). Arable farming, especially for vegetables and soft fruits, took places on this 'improved land'.
By the 1920s, over a hundred thousand tonnes of organic waste had been deposited on the mosses. However, the installation of water-based sewerage systems, and the almost total decline of horse-drawn traffic meant that solid waste was now considerably less of an issue.
To the south-east of Carrington Moss, a large waste-water processing plant was 'treating' the sewerage water discharged from the cities. Early sewerage treatment processes were limited in effectiveness, and the water subsequently discharged to the River Mersey was still far from clean (or safe for consumption).
To the northwest of Carrington Moss, a large iron and steel works has been constructed. Coal and other raw materials were bought to the site by rail and the Manchester Ship Canal, and the surrounding area was subject to impact from the industrial processes.
Ordnance Survey mapping in wartime Britain was remarkably sparse of detail. Certainly, nothing was shown that may be of interest to enemies of the crown.
As the map is so bare, we can't see that Carrington Moss has been set up as a 'starfish site'. These sites were massive decoys for nearby industrial areas (in this case, Trafford Park), where huge fires would be lit at night to simulate the success of Luftwaffe bombing raids. The idea was that fires at the decoy site would attract later-arriving bombers, and hopefully reduce damage to the true target. The decoy fires were fuelled by petrol, kerosene, diesel, and waste oil. Huge volumes of hydrocarbons were burned for many hours to maintain the decoy effect overnight, and massive clouds of smoke and fumes will have hung low over the surrounding landscape.
The 1980s map shows the almost complete industrialisation of Carrington Moss, though in truth this had been occurring for decades prior. A large chemical plant sits central to the moss, Carrington power station is visible at the northwest of the moss, adjacent the ship canal, and several waste water treatment works are to be seen immediately west and southwest.
Unlike many of the other mosses, which have either been drained for agricultural use or 'harvested' by peat extraction, Carrington Moss has been impacted by multiple different industrial and infrastructure uses. While large parts of the moss are no longer accessible, some small parts still exist and can be visited. For further details visit the Trafford Wildlife website and look for sites such as Birch Moss covert and others.
An interesting history of Carrington Moss can be read online here.
The mosses of Manchester have seen some considerable changes since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Almost all of that change has been damaging; much of it, literally, destructive. Peat has been removed from the mosses in vast quantity. Foreign materials and waste have been deposited in massive amount. Water courses have been diverted, habitats dehydrated and destroyed. Wildlife decimated. And infrastructure now criss-crosses many of the mosses where once only birds flew and small animals migrated seasonally.
However, in a few small corners, the old mosses remain, and in one or two places restoration work is taking place. While the efforts of humans cannot match the millennia of natural process that built up the mosses, some restoration of peat has taken place. Not yet to a depth of tens of metres, but up to a metre of peat has been restored at some sites. Continued work, provided climate change allows for it, may see further restoration of the mosses.
The Manchester Wetlands
In many ways, the overlooked part of the Carbon Landscape, the Manchester Wetlands are large, open tracts adjacent the River Mersey, between Rixton and Warrington. The habitats extend beyond the designated area to encompass parts of the Glaze Brook, the Manchester Ship Canal, the Mersey further upstream, the lower reaches of the Bollin, and other local rivers.
The Mersey Wetland Corridor sits within the broader Mersey valley, itself one of Natural England's National Character Areas (NCA). The descriptive report of NCA60 (Mersey Valley) can be read here, and provides a wealth of additional information beyond the scope of this virtual field trip.
Although the Mersey Valley is, nowadays, in many ways an anthropomorphic transport corridor linking Manchester, Liverpool, and multiple towns and cities in between, that wasn't always the case. Where now the transport links of the M62 motorway, the Liverpool-Manchester railways, the Manchester Ship Canal and, further north, the Bridgewater Canal, previously the Mersey valley was the site of multiple migration corridors. Deer and other large mammals between the Pennine hills, the Lancashire Plains and further afield. Birds such as Willow Tits, Marsh Harriers, Reed Warblers and even Bitterns moved along the valleys, and through the wetlands. Even insects and invertebrates, such as crested newts, natterjack toads, the extremely rare Manchester Argus moth, and more, used the wetland corridor as a natural migratory highway.
While much of this is difficult to imagine in todays crowded landscape, an analogue of the historic Mersey Valley wetlands exists at Woolston Eyes Site of Special Scientific Interest. This nature reserve, just 4km east of Warrington, is heavily protected and sensitively managed for nature. Many rare and endangered species have made a home here, and are thriving in this landscape sheltered from human impacts. Although you cannot just turn up and visit this site, organised visits can be arranged, and much can be learnt from their website.
The Virtual Field Trips
This website has, hopefully, raised your interest in the Carbon Landscape. We have created virtual field trips which will in turn guide you through the Flashes, the Mosses, and the Wetland Corridor. The field trips are designed such that you can gain a general understanding of the areas from your computer or, if you are in the Greater Manchester area, you can venture out and follow the suggested route for yourself. We always welcome comment and suggestion for improvement, so if you think we should add something to the field trips (or if you've spotted an error), please do not hesitate to let us know!
Link to Field Trip 1
Link to Field Trip 2
Link to Field Trip 3
Credits:
This introduction to our Virtual Field Trips has been created for academic use. As such, any and all imagery, maps, etc., have been downloaded and used under academic license or are open-source.