Peak District Cottages

Peak District Cottages Make A Wonderful Base To Explore The Park.

PEAK DISTRICT COTTAGES MAKE A GREAT BASE

Peak District cottages make a great base for exploring this wonderful landscape that has been formed over millions of years.

Explore This Beautiful Park

There are many aspects to the beautiful park set on the border of Yorkshire and Derbyshire in England and one that is often overlooked is its geological formation.

Over three hundred and fifty million years ago, the Peak District lay near the equator. Particles, of lime-mud corals and shellfish built up on the ocean bed creating the White Peak area you see today. When the seafloor slid away into the darkness, algae and bacteria bound particles together to make mud mounds or knoll reefs. These over time became the darker thinner limestone of the Dove dale and Manifold valleys.

Traces of under-sea volcanoes can still be seen around Tideswell Dale and Litton Mill Railway Cutting in Milldale.

Way back in time a vast River Delta flowed from the North, which is modern Scotland, into the tropical sea. Over time the river filled up the sea with fine silt and shell particles. The finest muds began to form the present day peak valley bottoms that became fertile farm land and relatively flat. Larger particles settled on top of the mud forming the grit stone that you see today from your Peak District cottages.

In these tropical swamps vegetation decayed and was squashed down by overlying deposits of sediments. This compressed vegetation became coal seams among the rocks that in time was exploited by man.

About two hundred and ninety million years ago massive continental plates collided. The impact, of this collision, crumpled the Earth's surface as far north as the Peak District and formed the landscape of Derbyshire with its raised rocks. Millions of years of erosion have sculptured the Peak District National Park and its dramatic grit stone edges, which are loved by climbers’ worldwide.

 

Blue John Mines

When the continental plates collided, mineral rich liquids brought up from below the Earth filled fractures in the Earth's crust. These then cooled into mineral crystals, such as Galena – Lead Ore, Chalcopyrite - Copper Ore, Barites, Calcite, Quartz and the world-famous fluorspar called Blue John.

These blue John mines can still be visited today in and around Castleton. Lead mining began in the Peak District, before the Romans arrived and lead miners used to work independently until mining companies took over the mining of lead in the 1700s. In Lathkill Dale, there was even a Goldrush in 1854 to 1856, but it faded when little gold was found.

More recently, Millstone Manufacturing was a thriving industry along the gritstone edges. The industry operated from the medieval period, right up to the 1930s. Remnants of this time can be seen in the many discarded millstones scattered through out the Dark Peak.

There is no doubt that the Peak District National Park is a wonderful place to explore off and you can do no better than to look for Peak District cottages as accommodation.

 

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Peak District Cottages