A Taste of the Peak District

Accommodation, activities and attractions of the Peak District of the UK

 Home >> General Information >> Geology >> Volcanoes

The Peak District was the first region in the UK to be designated as a National Park. Read a little about the volcanoes of the area on this page.

Home Accommodation Towns Attractions Climbing Cycling Walking Peak Views General info Mining Geology Archaeology Contact

If you have found this information helpful, please show your appreciation by making a small donation using the button below (securely via PayPal using a credit card).

It is difficult to imagine that volcanoes were ever active in the Peak District. During the Devonian era, Earth movements had created a range of mountains to the North, which eventually would erode and fill the warm seas of the Peak District. 

The volcanoes of the Peak District did not occur until later, during the early Carboniferous times. This vulcanism was probably linked Variscan orogeny. The volcanoes were of the Hawaiian type - shield volcanoes, so called because their slopes are relatively shallow, giving a profile like a medieval warrior’s shield laid on the floor. These pumped out basaltic lavas in a relatively quiet manner. They were submarine volcanoes so the lava cooled very quickly, giving very small crystals and forming ‘pillow lavas’ in places. Pillow lava looks like piles of sand bags made from rock. The lavas in a small quarry in Tideswell Dale show spheroidal weathering.

There were several volcanoes active around the Peak District but their activity seems to have been staggered so that vulcanism was never very extensive. Further evidence that vulcanism was low-key is that none of the volcanoes seem to have grown high enough to have emerged as a volcanic island, remembering that the seas were shallow. The rock legacy of the volcanic activity is layers of tuff (rock made from volcanic ash), agglomerate (rocks formed when the lava solidified in the vent of the volcanoes) and basalt lava flows. The hot springs that are the basis of the spa waters of Buxton are heated by the remnants of the magma (molten rock) that fed the volcanoes. The same hot water may have caused the extensive mineralisation of the Peak District rocks and led to one of the important industries of the past - mineral mining. Profits from copper mining at Ecton paid for many of the grand houses in Buxton. Minerals include amethyst and agate as well as the minerals that maybe attracted the Romans to the Peak District - sphalerite and galena (lead ore). Copper ores have been found and extensively mined in the west of the orefield, fluorite and barytes have also been removed. The unique ‘Blue John’ is a form of fluorite that is found only in the Castleton area. It may take its name from the French ‘bleu-jaune’ describing the colours in this mineral.

The minerals are found in rakes, veins and pipes. Rakes are worked from the surface e.g. Dirtlow rake near Calver. They are mineralised wrench (tear) faults. Very often slickenslides can be identified. Veins are mined underground and are joints and bedding planes that have been infilled by deposits from circulating groundwater. These give very narrow workings. Pipes are caves and other solution cavities that have been infilled with minerals. These are the richest and the easiest to mine, in some cases, the minerals were deposited as loose sediments by underground rivers, meaning that the lead, zinc and other ores could be excavated rapidly and in large quantities. Mineral pipes are mainly located in the south of the Peak District. The ore field stretches from Crich and Wirksworth in the south to Castleton in the north. The eastern boundary is more or less the line of the river Derwent up towards Hathersage and Bamford, the northern limit is roughly the A625 and the western limit is roughly the river Manifold.

Outcrops of volcanic rocks occur on Bonsall Moor, in Via Gellia and in the North west of the Peak District around Castleton and Buxton.

Search this site powered by FreeFind