Black Chew Head Black Chew Head Black Chew Head in Saddleworth in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham is the highest point or county top of Greater Manchester in northern England. It stands on moorland on the edge of the Peak District at a height of above sea level, close to the border with the High Peak district of Derbyshire. Black Chew Head is an outlying part of Black Hill, meaning Kinder Scout is its parent peak. It overlooks the Chew Valley, which leads eastwards and northwards to Dovestones Reservoir, and the valley of Crowden Great Brook leading south to Longdendale. The hill is
Moorland to heaths but are differentiated by having a covering of peat. On western moors the peat layer may be several metres thick. Scottish "muirs" are generally heather moors, but also have extensive covering of grass, cotton-grass, mosses, bracken and under-shrubs such as crowberry, with the wetter moorland having sphagnum moss merging into bog-land. There is uncertainty about how many moors were created by human activity. Oliver Rackham writes that pollen analysis shows that some moorland, such as in the islands and extreme north of Scotland, are clearly natural, never having had trees, whereas much of the Pennine moorland area was