38 - Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

This National Character Area (NCA) is defined by underlying shallow Coal Measures and consists of the relatively low-lying land to the east of the Pennine chain, bounded by the Peak District National Park and the wool and engineering towns of the Yorkshire Southern Pennine Fringe to the west. Views of the upland areas to the west are imposing within many urban areas such as Sheffield and throughout West Yorkshire. The Pennines NCAs also provide a number of ecosystem services for the area, notably in terms of water provision, flood mitigation, carbon sequestration and recreational opportunities.

The Pennine Dales Fringe forms a boundary to the north and the NCA is separated from the Humberhead Levels and Sherwood NCAs to the east by the low ridge of the Southern Magnesian Limestone which provides an elevated backdrop to views out of the NCA in some areas. In the south, a small section of the area is bounded by the Trent Valley Washlands NCA.

Several rivers flow into the NCA from the west, notably the Aire, Dearne, Erewash, Don and Rother; they rise outside the NCA in the Southern Pennines and flow through the Southern Pennine Fringe, linking the NCA to the more upland areas to the west and then to easterly NCAs as the rivers continue their course to ultimately drain into the River Humber catchment. In the south of the NCA, the River Erewash flows east and south to join the Trent. Activities associated with these rivers upstream of this NCA may therefore affect the NCA, and activities associated with them within the NCA may also affect other NCAs downstream. Hard surfacing within the large urban areas increases the speed at which water enters the river system, and the canalisation of rivers through built-up areas can have a significant impact on flooding; the management of floodwater in this NCA will not only have impacts on other NCAs downstream but also provides opportunities for re-creating linked wetland habitat mosaics within the river valleys.

A number of canals link the NCA with other NCAs, notably the Leeds-Liverpool Canal and the Cromford Canal, which also connects the NCA with the Derbyshire Peak Fringe and Lower Derwent NCA. The canals have a very strong historical and recreational focus and are becoming increasingly important to local communities for recreation. The Cromford Canal is being restored in some sections, and the local Friends of the Cromford Canal group works to raise awareness of its heritage importance and to re-open and re-join sections of the canal.

Transport corridors are a strong feature in the NCA and provide links to adjacent NCAs to the north and south. Notably, the M1 runs from Leeds south through the NCA, ultimately linking up with London. The A1 is the main transport route north from Leeds into neighbouring NCAs. In addition, a number of railway lines pass through the NCA including now disused former mineral lines, many of which have been reclaimed to form new multi-user trails.

The Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield today

Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfield is a large area which embraces major industrial towns and cities as well as villages and wider tracts of countryside. The landscape is underpinned by generally low and variable hills, escarpments and broad valleys. It is dominated in the north and central part, and less so in the south, by extensive urban influences and industry. There has been constant change and development since the Industrial Revolution, when there was rapid expansion of housing, workshops, large factories and transport networks. The result is a complex intermingling of rural and urban, of modern commerce with occasional industrial dereliction, the whole creating a mosaic of disparate land uses with fragmented semi-natural habitats dispersed throughout.

The clays, sandstones and mudstones of the Carboniferous Coal Measures give rise to mainly poor soils which traditionally supported pasture, but now there is more mixed farming. Arable cultivation is more common on the better soils to the north and east, while permanent pasture is more frequent on the higher land to the west, with some stretches of relatively unspoilt pastoral landscape to the west of Barnsley and the Moss Valley between Sheffield and Chesterfield. One particular local speciality is early forced rhubarb, which is produced in the ‘rhubarb triangle’ between Rothwell, Morley and Wakefield.

Overall field size and pattern is very variable, reflecting medieval clearance from woodland, the piecemeal enclosure of medieval strip fields, the importance of miners’ and weavers’ subsistence plots and, in contrast, late 18th- and early 19th-century enclosure of commons. As a result of the expansion of farms (especially since 1950) and peri-urban influences, there are some areas where the field patterns remain intact, with thick hedges including oak and ash hedgerow trees, while elsewhere the field pattern has broken down, with more post and wire and rail fences and few trees.

In urban fringes there are often small fields of degraded pasture, horse grazing and other varied uses. The pressure of fragmentation and degradation in these areas can give an appearance of neglect. Sites that are left undisturbed can provide a refuge for wildlife, with areas of bare ground and rubble found in former quarries, clay pits associated with former brickworks, industrial sites and railway sidings supporting pioneer plant species and often an abundance of invertebrates as well as important exposures of the bedrock geology.

Semi-natural habitats, including woodland, grassland, important remnant lowland heaths, open water and river valley wetland habitats, tend to be fragmented and scattered, their scarcity giving them greater significance. The coal mining history of the area has resulted in areas of subsidence where low-lying fields become inundated with water; ings are common and often support important species owing to their unusual water chemistry. The river valleys in rural areas provide corridors of wetland habitat and the creation of new habitat within them offers important sites for wading birds and overwintering wetland birds such as goosander.

Restored spoil heaps and open cast areas provide opportunities for creating new areas of habitat, such as heathland and grasslands, with tree planting often used to help stabilise sloped sites. This also gives the opportunity to local communities to get involved in and learn about the restoration of their local environment. Tree cover is variable but generally low and present as small woodlands. In some areas broadleaved woodland creates a robust framework of calm, green backdrops to otherwise poor-quality development. Woodland is most notable on poorer soils on steeper slopes and in areas where concentrated planting has taken place, such as the planting around Barnsley and Sheffield by the South Yorkshire Forest Partnership and in West Yorkshire by the White Rose Forest Partnership.

Several major rivers cut across the area, including the Aire, Calder, Dearne, Rother, Don and Erewash, but their courses tend to be obscured by the development that has grown up around them. The removal of weirs and introduction of fish passes are helping to increase biodiversity in these rivers and reinstate historical passages for a number of fish species such as salmon.

Much of the area is dominated by the extensive towns and industrial activity, with mills and factories tending to be located along river courses. The once-active coal mining industry has now largely closed, with colliery sites and spoil tips graded out and restored to woodland and pasture, so that just a few tips are still in evidence. More recent engineering, manufacturing and light industrial uses, as well as commercial and retail sites, have extended out from the urban areas. As a result there is a dense network of roads, including the M1 running north-south and the M62 running east-west, railways and canals.

Warehousing development around motorway junctions is a recent feature throughout and has a significant impact on the overall character of the landscape.

Many of the larger cities and towns, notably Leeds, Wakefield, Sheffield and Nottingham, have striking urban centres, dominated by the grand 19th century architecture of their town halls, libraries, museums, schools and other municipal buildings, built with the wealth generated from mining, manufacturing and engineering. Industrial benefactors were responsible for many of these notable civic buildings, all constructed from local sandstones, as were some of the factories and mills.

Older traditional villages in the NCA were built of local stone, generally Coal Measures sandstones and Millstone Grit found to the west. The majority of settlements were, however, subject to rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century when some completely new mining villages were also built. There are also areas with high densities of dispersed rural settlement owing to the mix of small-scale farming and employment in industrial and service activities. Locally produced brick and Welsh slate, often transported by rail, quickly replaced stone as the local building material, and many of the brick-built mining villages and towns from that period still survive today. Settlement expansion has continued and dominates the landscape over wide areas in the north of the NCA.

Historic buildings such as castle ruins, old churches, country houses and follies associated with country estates, and built with local sandstones, remain as important features and landmarks in the landscape. There are 34 Registered Parks and Gardens in the NCA including Victorian cemeteries but mainly parks associated with country houses built by wealthy industrialists. These also include the ring of parks around Leeds, notably Roundhay, the large estates overlooking the Doe Lea in north Derbyshire, including Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle, and the ruins of Codnor Castle overlooking the Erewash Valley. These large areas of parkland and woodland provide a refuge for many species within more built-up areas and important access to open space for the local population.

Country parks provide over 1,000 ha of accessible land within the NCA and are an important recreational asset, offering further opportunities to engage the local population. Reservoirs also provide opportunities for recreation, both active sites, for example Ulley, and inactive sites, such as Thrybergh. Recreational opportunities are provided by a large number of local walking initiatives, parks, reservoirs and canals, and links outside the NCA in the form of long-distance routes such as the Ebor Way. Further opportunities are afforded by closed mineral railway lines which have been developed into multi-user trails, such as the Trans Pennine Trail.

The landscape through time

In late Carboniferous times, this area formed part of an ancient coastline, where the cyclical flooding and building of swamp deltas along the former coastline resulted in the deposition of a series of coal layers (the compressed remains of the luxuriant swamp vegetation), interspersed with layers of shale, clay, sandstone and mudstone. These sediments now form the Coal Measures, which overlie the Millstone Grit and form the bedrock geology underlying the NCA and its major conurbations. Fossils within the various layers of the Coal Measures include mainly plants, but also marine shells and animals that lived in brackish water conditions, indicating that there were repeated advances and retreats of the shallow sea over the landscape throughout the Upper Carboniferous.

The Coal Measures consist mainly of mudstone with beds of sandstone, many seams of coal and associated fossil soils. Like the Millstone Grit of the Pennine uplands to the west, the sandstones resist erosion and form a recurring pattern of escarpments that stand proud of shallow, mudstone-floored valleys. The sandstone beds of the Coal Measures are rather thinner than those of the Millstone Grit and hence the escarpments that they form are less dramatic, lower and more rounded.

Major rivers crossing the area have carved broad valleys with fertile flood plains created by alluvial deposits. However, the ridges generally run north-west to south-east, almost at right angles to the natural west to east flow of the rivers. In practice this gives rise to a characteristic pattern in the valleys where the rivers flow north or south until weaker sandstone or geological faults are encountered, when they will abruptly change course to flow into the next valley. Only in the north of the NCA has glaciation contributed to the shaping of some valleys such as the Aire Valley near Leeds with glacial till deposits around Bradford and Leeds.

It is, however, the working of coal by deep mining and later by open casting, together with resources of stone, fireclay, ironstone and soft water, which led to the greatest effects on the shape of the landscape by triggering the industrial growth which has been so dominant in its impact on the area.

Although much archaeological evidence of early settlement and land use has been obscured by later industrial development, there are Romano-British and earlier crop marks across the area and some linear earthworks marking significant boundaries, possibly refortified during the 10th century. Scattered Mesolithic and Neolithic evidence has been found along the River Don. Exceptions include the surviving stretches of Roman road at Rykneld Street.

By medieval times the clearance of the original forests had led to a farmed landscape with villages, hamlets and individual farms. Well-developed open field systems were common in the more fertile eastern soils but small, irregularly hedged and walled fields prevailed further west where rough grazing and pastoral farming dominated.

Medieval granges and moated sites, some within hunting forests and deer parks, were established. Codnor Castle is one of only two surviving medieval castles in Derbyshire. Holly trees were grown as winter fodder and holly remains a major component in many of the older hedgerows. After the mid 17th century the remaining open fields and commons were gradually enclosed, initially privately and then by Parliamentary Enclosure Acts, usually giving rise to more regularly shaped fields with predominantly hawthorn hedgerows.

Local resources of iron ore resulted in the development of an iron and steel trade by the early 17th century. A specialist cutlery industry soon developed around Sheffield, based on the fast-flowing streams which provided water power and local woods which were coppiced for charcoal. Butterley Steel Company, founded near Ripley, once produced 25 per cent of England’s steel, which was renowned for its strength (and notably used for the spanned iron work at St Pancras station in London).

The area’s streams and rivers were subject to intensive management from the medieval period in order to power fulling, textile and metal-working mills. With the combination of these natural resources and good-quality agricultural land, wealth was rapidly accumulated from the 17th century onwards. Former deer parks were often landscaped in the 18th century, usually retaining their herds of deer. Wealthy industrialists created a number of large country houses, parks and estates in the area in the 18th and 19th centuries, many of which still contribute to the character of the landscape today.