Chat Moss
Chat Moss is a large area of peat bog that makes up part of the City of Salford, Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Warrington and Trafford MBC. Peat development seems to have begun there with the ending of the last ice age, about 10,00 years ago. The M62 motorway, completed in 1976, crosses the bog, to the north of Irlam.
About Chat Moss in brief
Chat Moss is a large area of peat bog that makes up part of the City of Salford, Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Warrington and Trafford MBC. It occupies an area of about 10. 6 square miles and is thought to be about 7,000 years old. Peat development seems to have begun there with the ending of the last ice age, about 10,00 years ago. A 228-acre area of Chat Moss, notified as Astley and Bedford Mosses, was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1989. The M62 motorway, completed in 1976, crosses the bog, to the north of Irlam. 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 parts of the bog near Worsley. A large-scale network of drainage channels is still required to keep the land from reverting to bog. Much of the land is now prime agricultural land, although farming in the area is in decline. 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, it is perhaps more likely that the name stems from the Celtic word ced, meaning wood. Daniel Defoe visited the area in 1724, on his way from Warrington to Manchester: From hence, on the road to Manchester, we pass’d the great bog or waste call’d Chatmos, the first of that kind that we see in England .
The surface, at a distance, looks black and dirty, and is indeed frightful to think of, for it will bear neither horse or man, unless in an exceeding dry season, and then not so as to be passable, or that any one should travel over them. John Leland, writing during the reign of King Henry VIII, described one such event: Chat Moss brast up within a mile of Mosley Haul, and destroyed much fresh-water fishche thereabout, first corrupting with stinkinge water Glasebrooke, and so GlaseBrooke carried stinking and mosse water, part to the shores of Manle of Ireland, and the other part to Mersey. Some of the water isle isle of Wales, and some unto Ireland, but some part to Manle, Man, Wales, isle and Mersey corrupted carried the roulling mosse, part of it to the shore of Man, Man and Ireland. It was recorded as Catemosse in 1277 and Chatmos in 1322. Along with nearby Risley Moss and Holcroft Moss, Astley Mosses has also been designated as a European Union Special Area of Conservation, known as Manchester Mosses. In 1829 George Stephenson, with advice from East Anglian marshland specialist Robert Stannard, succeeded in constructing a railway line through it in 1829.
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This page is based on the article Chat Moss published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 02, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
