Froghall Wharf

Froghall Wharf is some three miles north of Cheadle in North Staffordshire within the beautiful Churnet Valley at the end of the Cauldon Canal. The picnic place has picnic tables, parking and toilet facilities.

Although the wharf is now a quiet, secluded area, colonised by trees, shrubs and wildflowers, it was not always like this.

In the mid-nineteenth century the wharf was a hive of industrial activity. Wagons full of limestone trundled down the four miles of inclines, cuttings and embankments to the wharf from the Cauldon Low quarries higher up in the hills. Empty barges arrived along the canal from the Potteries to be loaded with limestone for both industrial and constructional use. Limestone was also loaded into railway wagons in the sidings in front of the lime kilns and a steam engine would then haul the loaded wagons across the Foxt Road for shipment through the national rail network.

Close by were brick kilns using local clay probably also transported along the tramways, whilst slightly further afield miners worked shallow coalmines and an extensive deposit of high-grade iron ore.