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The Cheadle Coalfield is a coalfield in the United Kingdom. Centred on the town of Cheadle, Staffordshire and its outlying villages it lies to the east of Stoke-on-Trent and the much larger North Staffordshire Coalfield. The area has been mined for many years, with documentary evidence from Croxden Abbey citing coal mining in the 13th century. Deep mining ceased in 1965 with the closure of Foxfield Colliery by the National Coal Board. Private adit mining and opencast mining ceased in 1994 with the exhaustion of economic reserves. == Geology == The Cheadle Coalfield covers an area of about and lies to the East of Stoke on Trent and its larger neighbour, the North Staffordshire Coalfield.〔 The boundary of the coalfield in the west is the Village of Forsbrook, and nearby Callow Hill where a small fault marks the western boundary. The coalfield then underlies the villages of Dilhorne and Kingsley. Further east a major fault in the Churnet Valley throws the coal upwards. Over millions of years the upper seams in this area were washed away and the lower seams outcrop around Ipstones, Foxt and Alton. The coalfield's eastern boundary is the Millstone Grit and Limestone of the Pennines around Ipstones Edge. Despite the coalfield being detached from its much larger neighbour, the North Staffordshire Coalfield, and developing from the latter in relative isolation, geological analysis by the National Coal Board in the mid 20th century correlated the coal seams of the two coalfields.〔 Around the coalfield the measures are covered with alluvium and marl with sizeable amounts of industrial sand, gravel and limestone predominating in certain areas. The Sherwood sandstone group is the predominant rock that occurs, and comprises up to 205m of conglomerates and sandstone with scattered siltstone and mudstone. Within the area the Sandstone group has been subdivided into three lithostratigraphic formations, and quarrying for aggregates and minerals is an important industry around the coalfield area. The coal is found at a shallow depth which made mining in the area relatively easy. As the coal outcrops around the Cheadle area, the seams that were heavily worked are the deeper seams in the North Staffs field, in many cases seams that were too deep to mine economically in North Staffordshire. However they were found in shallow depths around Cheadle. 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「Cheadle Coalfield」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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