Alveley and Severn Valley Country Park
Exercise your body and your mind on a healthy walk around old Alveley village and the restored landscape of 20th century coal mining. The walk will help towards your daily exercise routine. At the same time think about how the landscape has come to look as it does, because of the rocks on which it is built, or those found in the surrounding area.
The most noticeable scenic feature of the area today is the valley of the River Severn, cut into a broad valley immediately west of the village. But rather than descending gradually, the slope clearly has a broad central step in it. 25,000 years ago this step was the flood plain of a young River Severn. Only 70 years ago this terrace provided a level platform from which to exploit a much older geological feature, but one totally hidden from view: the coal seams of the Highley and Alveley Collieries. From 1936 to 1969 the colliery waste from the workings east of the river was piled up on the terrace such as to completely remodel the valley side. In the 1980s, the considerable amount of remaining spoil that had not been removed for use as aggregate elsewhere, was landscaped into the smoothly rounded contours that we see today.
Free leaflet
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