page_title: Salta, Cumbria
section_title: Geography and farming
hierarchical_section_title: Salta, Cumbria / Geography and farming
caption_attribution_description: English: An irrigation ditch and unpaved track on Salta Moss in Cumbria.
context_page_description: Salta is a hamlet in the parish of Holme St Cuthbert in northwestern Cumbria, United Kingdom. It is located 1.1 miles southwest of the village of Mawbray, and 25.1 miles southwest of the city of Carlisle. It has a population of about 35 people.
  Salta can only be accessed from the lane from Mawbray, which goes on to join the B5300 coast road, although two public bridleways provide access over the fields from Hailforth and Mawbray. The hamlet consists of mainly bungalows, and a farm is still in operation in the vicinity. A caravan park, Manor House Park, is situated across the Moss to the southeast, to the southwest of the hamlet of Edderside.
  The settlement's name is derived from "sēalt-tir", meaning "salt land" in Old English, as during Anglo-Saxon times, salt making was a major industry on the Solway Plain. Fortified during the Roman period, in the 1550s, Salta participated in a system called "seawake", a night watch to guard the coast against incursions across the Solway by the Scots. Salta Moss was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1954 and forms part of the Solway Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
context_section_description: Salta lies near the coast of northwestern Cumbria. By road it is situated 1.1 miles (1.8 km) south of Mawbray, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) north of Allonby, 2.3 miles (3.7 km) southwest of Holme St Cuthbert and 7.4 miles (11.9 km) southwest of Abbeytown. It shares very close community ties with nearby Mawbray, although the city of Carlisle provides wider amenities, some 25.1 miles (40.4 km) to the northeast. The shore of Allonby Bay, an inlet of the Solway Firth, is a mere half-a-mile to the west of the hamlet. A beck (a local word meaning "stream") flows through Salta, fed in part by irrigation channels. This beck eventually joins the Black Dub and drains into the Solway Firth at Dubmill.
  Salta Moss is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, both for its natural and historical significance, and is itself is located in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty which covers much of the Solway Plain. The Moss is an area of peatland, containing "mainly oligotrophic semi-fibrous grass-sedge peat" according to Soil Survey Record. It combines characteristics of both a raised bog and a valley mire, and lies atop deposits of glacial sand from the last ice age. It was designated an SSSI in 1954.
  Having been cut with irrigation channels, and been the site of burning and peat working, Salta Moss has different flora than other bogs or mires on the Solway Plain. The Moss today is common ground, but a track runs through it to provide access for local farmers to outlying fields, which surround it. An irrigation ditch has also been dug to provide drainage to the surrounding farmland.
  There is some concern that areas of the Moss have been damaged or partly destroyed as a result of agricultural activity, including the digging of drainage ditches. Natural England, the agency responsible for the management of SSSIs in England, has suggested that no further irrigation channels should be dug, existing ones should not be deepened, and that the area should not be exposed to fertilisers or surface water run-off. Natural England further notes that the site's continued status as an SSSI depends on maintaining a high water table.
caption: An irrigation ditch runs next to an unpaved track on Salta Moss.
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