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Chat Moss is a large area of peat bog that makes up 30 per cent of the City of Salford, in Greater Manchester, England. North of the Manchester Ship Canal and River Mersey, to the west of Manchester, it occupies an area of about . As it might be recognised today, Chat Moss is thought to be about 7,000 years old, but peat development seems to have begun there with the ending of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. The depth of peat ranges from . A great deal of reclamation work has been carried out, particularly during the 19th century, but a large-scale network of drainage channels is still required to keep the land from reverting to bog. In 1958 workers extracting peat discovered the severed head of what is believed to be a Romano-British Celt, possibly a sacrificial victim, in the eastern part of the bog near Worsley. Much of Chat Moss is now prime agricultural land, although farming in the area is in decline. A area of Chat Moss, notified as Astley and Bedford Mosses, was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1989. Along with nearby Risley Moss and Holcroft Moss, Astley and Bedford Mosses has also been designated as a European Union Special Area of Conservation, known as Manchester Mosses. Chat Moss threatened the completion of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, until George Stephenson, with advice from East Anglian marshland specialist Robert Stannard, succeeded in constructing a railway line through it in 1829; his solution was to "float" the line on a bed of bound heather and branches topped with tar and covered with rubble stone. The M62 motorway, completed in 1976, also crosses the bog, to the north of Irlam. ==History== Chat Moss may be named after St Chad, a 7th-century bishop of Mercia, but as it was once part of a great tree-edged lake, as evidenced by the numerous wood remains in the lower levels of the peat, it is perhaps more likely that the name stems from the Celtic word ''ced'', meaning wood. Chat Moss could also derive from Ceatta, an Old English personal name and ''mos'', a swamp or alternatively the first element could be the Old English ''ceat'' meaning a piece of wet ground. It was recorded as Catemosse in 1277 and Chatmos in 1322. ''Moss'' is the local name for a peat bog.〔 Daniel Defoe visited the area in 1724, on his way from Warrington to Manchester: Peat bogs sometimes burst their boundaries, particularly after being subjected to heavy rainfall, and this seems to have happened with Chat Moss in the 16th century. John Leland, writing during the reign of King Henry VIII, described one such event: Chat Moss presented a significant challenge to the engineers constructing the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1826 because of the difficulty in providing a solid base for the track, in particular at a location known as Blackpool Hole. George Stephenson was the engineer in charge of the project, and his initial idea was to dump enough spoil in the bog so that it would reach the bottom. This approach turned out to be impractical however, as the liquidity of the bog allowed the spoil to flow away from where the track was to be laid. The eventual solution, to build the line on a "floating" wood and stone foundation, was hailed as a "great triumph of engineering". The first train ran through Chat Moss in 1830, and the line is still in use today. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chat Moss」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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