Cheadle, Staffordshire

Cheadle
Population
OS grid reference	SK010431
District	Staffordshire Moorlands
Shire county	Staffordshire
Region	West Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Stoke-on-Trent
Postcode district	ST10
Dialling code	01538
Police	Staffordshire
Fire	Staffordshire
Ambulance	West Midlands
UK Parliament	Staffordshire Moorlands

Not to be confused with Cheadle, Greater Manchester.

Cheadle is a small market town near to Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England, with a population of 12,158 according to the 2001 census. It is roughly 15 miles from the city of Stoke-on-Trent, 50 miles north of Birmingham and 50 miles south of Manchester. It is also around 5 miles from the Alton Towers leisure park.

History

Cheadle is an historic market town dating back to Anglo-Saxon times,and with its own reference in the Domesday Book It was(and still is,but not for administrative purposes) in the historic Staffordshire Hundred of Totmonslow,nowadays it is part of the Staffordshire Moorlands area.

The High Street of Cheadle has many attractive old buildings and is little changed from how it looked in Victorian times,and for a small town has a bustling High Street with Independant retailers and a fine market. Of particular interest in the town are the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches both of which are dedicated to St. Giles. The Catholic church, built 1841-6 at the expense of the Earl of Shrewsbury was designed by Pugin who, in collaboration with Sir Charles Barry, also designed the rebuilt Houses of Parliament. The Anglican Church was totally rebuilt in 1837-9 to the design of J. P. Pritchett but incorporating fragments and furniture from the earlier church.There is also a strong Methodist Tradition in Cheadle and the surrounding Villages and there is a large modern Methodist Church in the town.

Cheadle has had a varied and eventful history. The historic Industries that the town has depended on have been Coal Mining,Agriculture,Brass making and the historic Copper Industry in nearby Froghall and Oakamoor.The town and the nearby village of Upper Tean also had a textiles industry in tape weaving. Nowadays the town is home to a large JCB factory, and there are several small industrial units on the site of the former New Haden Colliery.The nearby theme park of Alton Towers also employs a lot of people from the Cheadle area. Cheadle did have a Railway Station which was originally opened by the North Staffordshire Railway in the early part of the twentieth Century,after years of petitioning for a connection.It was closed by British Rail in the 1960's for passenger traffic,and for Freight traffic in the 1980's as the local Sand and Gravel quarries moved their loads to road Transport.

The Cheadle Coalfield

The Cheadle Coalfield is totally detached from the nearby North Staffordshire Coalfield and covers an area of about 20 sq miles from Dilhorne in the West to Ipstones and Foxt in the East where the Coal meets the millstone grit and Carboniferous Limestone of the Peak District. Despite the coalfield being detached from its much larger neighbour,the North Staffordshire Coalfield,and developing from the North Staffs field in relative isolation, the two Coalfields were correlated by analysis of marine bands in the mid 20th century which confirmed that the two coal fields are the same,and were probably separated by something called a washout a couple of million years ago. The coal measures are covered with Alluvium and Marl across the coalfield and the coal is found at a relatively shallow depth. As the Coal outcrops around the Cheadle area, the seams that were generally worked are the deeper ones in the North Staffs field, in many cases too deep to economically mine,yet they were found in shallow depths around Cheadle.

The coal measures around Cheadle were worked for a number of centuries and there is documentary evidence that the coal was worked before the 17th Century.George Barrow, a nineteenth Century geologist who did a survey of the Coalfield said that

The district possesses a peculiar interest on account of the great antiquity of these workings, they can be traced back as far at least of the reign of Richard III.

The Industry, however, had its heyday during the 19th century.The 1880 edition of the Ordnance Survey plan of the area shows 66 coal mines, along with a number of Ironstone mines. Mining around Cheadle was done on a relatively small scale compared with the nearby Potteries and many of the miners knew the owners of the mines, as most were owned by local landowners.

In Particular, the Whitehurst and Bamford families owned Collieries around the Dilhorne area in a partnership. Their biggest concern was the Dilhorne Colliery, which was a large Pit and incorporated the Old Engine Colliery, one of the first in Cheadle to have a Steam Engine. The Bowers family of Harewood Hall were local Coalmasters for a number of years and originally owned the famous Woodhead Colliery, and Robert Plant, a local character who was prominent in some small mining ventures, many of which only found water, particularly at Draycott Cross where the shaft that he sunk is now the Severn Trent water borehole!

The industry gradually reduced in size and by the late 1930s the only 2 deep mines left were Foxfield Colliery and New Haden Colliery. Both were fairly large mines for Cheadle and were very modern. Foxfield was heavily modernised during the 30s when it was decided to close Parkhall Colliery and concentrate production at Foxfield, mainly due in part to the rail connection the Colliery had to the Stoke - Derby railway line at Blythe Bridge. Extensive new surface facilities were built and in what was unique for Cheadle, Concrete headgears were erected. New Haden, which had the early nickname of the "Klondyke" due to the thick Woodhead coal the pit mined was one of the first Mines in Staffordshire to be electrified underground and, in addition to the colliery there was a brickworks in production.

By Nationalisation of the mining industry in 1947, Foxfield was the last deep mine in the Cheadle Coalfield. New Haden had closed in 1943 after heavy flooding underground rendered the mine uneconomic. The workforce was either transferred to Foxfield, or to Berry Hill Colliery in the Potteries. Foxfield grew steadily under the ownership of the National Coal Board until it employed nearly 600 men by the mid 1950's.The pits suface buildings were again modernised and a new shower block for the miners was constructed. However, output and manpower steadily decreased from the mid 50's peak and the Colliery was finally closed in 1965. The majority of the miners were transferred to Florence Colliery in Longton,where a face in the Moss seam was prepared for the Cheadle miners, or Hem Heath Coliery in Trentham.

Foxfield was the last deep mine in the Cheadle Coalfield and had worked for 83 years which was a record for a Cheadle pit. It had also stretched its boundaries further than any other pit in the coalfield and was indeed a worthy colliery and one that Cheadle should be very proud of. The last face that was worked at Foxfield was Dilhorne 21's. Ironically, and considering the scale of the Coal Industry in Staffordshire the winding gear and surface buildings at Foxfield still exist to this day and are owned by the Foxfield Steam Railway who run heritage steam traction to the former Collery along the branch line from their base at Blythe Bridge.

After the end of deep mining Coal was mined in Cheadle right up til the mid 1990s by opencast mining methods. There were also a few small adit, or drift mines which were situated where the coal outcropped. Until the end of deep Coal Mining in Staffordshire during the 1990s, Cheadle was still very much a mining town with a lot of men working in the Potteries coalfield,and buses everyday used to ferry the men of Cheadle to the pits at Florence and Hem Heath, keeping alive the centuries old tradition of Cheadle men working underground mining Coal.

The Coal Seams of the Cheadle Coalfield

Because the coalfield developed in isolation from the Potteries coalfield, the seam names are different to those in use in the Potteries. However, as stated earlier, the seams were correlated together in the 1950s by the analysis of marine bands. Below are the seams in the Cheadle Coalfield, the shallowest at the top. However, the shallow seams in the Potteries don't exist in Cheadle, having been washed away millions of years ago. The equivalent seam in the Potteries coalfield is shown in brackets, and the approximate thickness is shown in feet.

Delphouse (Bellringer) 2'6"

Two Yard (10 Feet) 5'0"

Getley 2'0"

Half Yard (Bowling Alley) 2'8"

Yard (Holly Lane) 3'0"

Litley (Hard Mine) 2'6" (the coal is split by a 4" dirt band into upper & lower Litley seams)

Four Feet (New Moss) 4'0"

Thin (Flatts) 1'6"

Little Dilhorne (Banbury) 2'8"

Big Dilhorne (Cockshead) 5'0" (also nicknamed the Cheadle, Huntley or six feet)

Blackstone 1'6"

Ouster (Limekiln) 0'9"

Parkhall Sweet (Whitehurst) 1'0"

Little Alecs 1'6"

Alecs (Bullhurst) 3'6"(nicknamed the stinking due to high sulphur content)

Foxfield (Winpenny) 1'0"(the seam is named after Foxfield wood where it outcrops, not the Pit)

Cobble (Brickiln) n/a

Rider (little Cannel Row) n/a

Woodhead (King) 3'0" (the most famous Coal in Cheadle)

Crabtree (Crabtree) n/a

Third Grit/sweet n/a (mainly found around the Foxt/Ipstones area)

All the thicknesses are approximate.

The seams are generally named after where the coal outcropped, ie,Woodhead, Dilhorne, Foxfield, Litley etc. Of all the coal, the Woodhead is probably the most famous in the coalfield and was the seam that was most sought after by the miners and the owners. The Dilhorne seam is famous as it was extensively worked by Foxfield Colliery right up to the closure of that pit.

The seam names are a wonderful and romantic attachment to the past for Cheadle and one that the town should be proud of, particularly now that the mining industry is history. But only a couple of generations ago the above names, particularly the Big Dilhorne and Woodhead would be talked about by most folk in Cheadle as their livelihoods depended on the mining of the "black gold."

Notable individuals

• Gareth Owen, professional footballer was born in Cheadle
• Herbert Chester, a prominent local historian who wrote two books, The history of the Cheadle Coalfield, and the Iron Valley concerning the Churnet Valley Iron Industry.

Schools

• Painsley Catholic College [1]
• Cheadle High School [2]
• Bishop Rawle C.E. (Aided) Primary School [3]
• St.Giles Roman Catholic Primary School [4]
• Cheadle Primary School
• St Thomas' Primary Catholic School (Tean) [5]

Transport

Cheadle used to be served by a branch line opened in 1901 from Cresswell which was a station on the North Staffordshire Railway Crewe to Derby Line. The line closed to passenger traffic in 1953 but remained open to serve local gravel quarries until 1978. Bus services to Cheadle were provided by PMT until it was bought out by First Group, now operating under the name First PMT. Such service include bus number '32 Hanley - Uttoxeter', every twenty minutes and '32A Hanley - Uttoxeter via Alton Towers', every two hours (one hour during the summer).

Further reading

• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). Staffordshire (Pevsner Buildings of England). Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300096460.

See also

• Cheadle, Alberta, Canada - A Canadian town called Cheadle

External links

• The Cheadle Town Website

• The Cheadle Post & Times website