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Oakamoor

Staffordshire MoorlandsStaffordshire geography stubsTowns and villages of the Peak DistrictVillages in Staffordshire
Oakamoor Village Centre geograph.org.uk 458933
Oakamoor Village Centre geograph.org.uk 458933

Oakamoor is a small village in north Staffordshire, England. Although it is now a rural area, it has an industrial past which drew on the natural resources of the Churnet valley. Iron was smelted from medieval times. Copper and lumber were also important to the local economy. In the nineteenth century Thomas Bolton's copperworks near the River Churnet supplied copper wire for the first transatlantic telegraph cable. The buildings of the Thomas Bolton factory were demolished in 1966. Lightoaks Hall on Cheadle Road dates from the 1820s and was built for the Bolton family. Holy Trinity parish church, on Church Bank, was erected in 1832, at a cost of £1600, raised by subscription and a grant from the Church Building Society. The Churnet Valley line passed through Oakamoor. Oakamoor railway station was closed down in 1967. The railway track leading to Alton Towers railway station has been converted to a footpath.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Oakamoor (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Oakamoor
Star Bank, Staffordshire Moorlands Oakamoor

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N 53 ° E -1.91667 °
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Address

The Laurels Bed and Breakfast

Star Bank The Laurels
ST10 3BN Staffordshire Moorlands, Oakamoor
England, United Kingdom
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Website
thelaurels.co.uk

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Oakamoor Village Centre geograph.org.uk 458933
Oakamoor Village Centre geograph.org.uk 458933
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Nearby Places

The Old Furnace
The Old Furnace

The Old Furnace is a colloquial name given to an historic site in Oakamoor, Staffordshire, England, that supported the development of medieval and post-medieval iron smelting. The furnace was situated in the Churnet Valley in the Staffordshire moorlands. A later Elizabethan-era blast furnace once stood on the site of the present Old Furnace Cottage. That furnace, the first in the north of England, was constructed in 1592 by Lawrence Loggin. The stone was brought three miles from Hollington by mule down an ancient trackway. This path can still be seen in the field next to the cottage. Problems arose from the outset, and after nine months the site was abandoned, which gave way to its old furnace name. An archaeological evaluation undertaken in 2004, in unison with an episode of the British archaeology television programme Time Team, revealed that iron smelting using the bloomery process, with associated pottery of the 13th and 14th century dates, was well established on the site in the medieval period. An "unstratified sherd of late Saxon pottery" hinted that iron working on the site may date back to the 10th or 11th centuries.George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, whose seat was two miles away, owned rights to many mineral-extraction sites in the area. His business affairs passed to his wife, Bess of Hardwick, upon his death in 1590.The firm of Thomas Bolton, a copper extruder, had a works at Oakamoor. In 1869 he built the home now known as Old Furnace Cottage for his workers.