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Kirkby Moor

British power station stubsCumbria geography stubsEnglish Site of Special Scientific Interest stubsFells of the Lake DistrictFurness
Marilyns of EnglandMoorlands of EnglandSites of Special Scientific Interest in CumbriaWind farms in England
Kirkby Moor
Kirkby Moor

Kirkby Moor is a poorly defined moorland area in southern Cumbria, England, named after the village of Kirkby-in-Furness, but stretching both sides of the A5092 road, and thus spanning the border of the Lake District National Park. The highest area, to the south of the road, and therefore outside the national park, is named Lowick High Common on Ordnance Survey maps, but "Kirkby Moor" is more commonly but incorrectly used. Lowick High common is the first UK SOTA summit to be activated 100 times. The highest point of Lowick High Common and of Kirkby Moor is 333 m above sea level. The major man-made features are a slate quarry operated by Burlington Slate Ltd and a wind farm consisting of 12 400 kW turbines which is operated by RWE Innogy. The fell is crossed by several public footpaths, as well as the Kirkby Slate Road, which has a right of access. There are also numerous tracks built across the fell in association with the wind turbines; although notices request walkers to stick to the public rights of way, in practice there is no issue with using the newer tracks, and from 28 May 2005 the land is access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The wide range of paths allows for many start points and routes to explore the heather-covered moor.

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

Kirkby Moor
Kirkby Slate Road,

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Wikipedia: Kirkby MoorContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 54.2454 ° E -3.13863 °
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Address

Kirkby Slate Road
LA17 7AD , Kirkby Ireleth
England, United Kingdom
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Kirkby Moor
Kirkby Moor
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Kirkby Slate Quarries
Kirkby Slate Quarries

Kirkby Slate Quarries, formally known as Burlington Slate Quarries, are located near Kirkby-in-Furness in Cumbria, England. The quarries have produced a characteristic blue-grey slate for hundreds of years, with large-scale production starting in the early 19th century, when the Cavendish family organised small-scale quarrying activities by local farmers into a larger group of quarries, which then attracted others into the area to live and work in the quarries from the 1820s onwards. The slates were formed during the Early Devonian when a slaty cleavage was imposed on the Ordovician and Silurian rocks of the area. The best quality slate with the most even and regular cleavage was formed from the lithologically uniform mudstone successions. The quarrying at Burlington can be directly related to the development of Kirkby, which merged from six smaller farming hamlets: Soutergate, Wall End, Beck Side, Sand Side, Marshside and Chapels. The opening of the slate quarry helped merge these, the name Kirkby dating from the construction of the Cumbrian Coast railway line to the village. The quarry does not have a galleries system, as many quarries are, but as an enormous pit several hundred feet in depth. The quarry operations have spread throughout and under Kirkby Moor, but now production only takes place at the very bottom of the quarry; with the rock being removed via a cutting from a shallower part of the pit. The slate blocks were initially removed from the large open pits by blasting and then reduced to a manageable size using a mell (sledge hammer) and tully (long-handled wedge-shaped hammer) before being transported to the cutting sheds, sawn to size and riven into thin slates. Typical of many Welsh slate quarries, such as Dinorwig, Penrhyn and Rhiw-Bach, Burlington adopted the use of a long series of inclined trackways and water balance lifts to provide material transport from the quarries. The lowest of the series was the Sandside, which connected Burlington with the port and mainline railway at Sandside on the Duddon Estuary.