The cliffs are moving because they are rubbish!  The removal of coal from underground has always caused waste. Coal typically makes up 60% of every ton of material brought up to the surface. The other 40% is shale stone.

Sinking the mineshaft at Saltom produced over 38,000 cubic feet of waste.   In 1734 Saltom produced 1,607 tons of coal. It also produced 1,000 tons of waste spoil.   This happened every year until it stopped drawing coal in 1848.

Saltom, like all the other pits on Whitehaven’s coast, tipped the spoil over the sandstone cliffs.  When you walk down to Saltom you are walking over a mass of crumbling spoil from hundreds of years of mining work.  Grasses and plants make it look stable, but it’s an illusion!  The natural sandstone cliffs are buried below the “rubbish”. 

The spoil around Saltom is a rusty red colour.  Engineers restoring the engine house at Saltom think this is because the spoil tips caught fire at some point in the past.  What remains is caked and brittle, like the scrapings from an enormous fire-grate.

Rainfall and erosion by waves puts pressure on this unstable ground.   Land slips are common.  Two thirds of Saltom’s pit-head buildings lie buried beneath the “Fairy Rock” landslip, and it is still moving.  The spoil tips add to the pressure on the naturally moving cliff. Work in 2008 restored the access track, which had slipped.  The simple fact is that one day, all of Saltom will be buried, and no-one can predict where the next slip will be.

Please go and explore this wonderful heritage site, but take care on the unstable man-made “cliffs”.