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Although geology left no chalk rocks in Northumberland, strangely the county does have one area of chalk grassland, the Spetchells.
Spetchells, is an old name of uncertain origin, originally applied to the area of rough grassland and scrub along the south bank of the River Tyne near Prudhoe which was traditionally used for recreation. According to Northumberland Words by Richard Oliver Heslop (1894), a spetchel or spatchel was the thin layer of turf laid between horizontal rows of stones used in building a wall ('a stone and spetchel dike').
The name is now associated with the 1km long mound of calcium carbonate dumped between the River Tyne and the railway as industrial waste by ICI as the result of manufacturing ammonium sulphate for fertiliser and explosives during World War II. The plant closed in 1963. The process involved using calcium sulphate obtained from powdered natural gypsum, or anhydrite, added to a solution of ammonium carbonate. Calcium carbonate precipitates out from the reaction Link
The Spetchells are estimated to comprise two and a half million tons of this chalk. The dump was turfed over to make it less obvious to German bombers. Ash and sycamore trees were planted on the slopes, and hornbeams on the top, in an attempt to stabilise the mounds. The Spetchells now support plants typical of the ungrazed chalk grasslands of southern England, and a specialised chalk-loving fauna has also arrived, including rare butterflies and moths.
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