Landfill Check

Historic landfill sites in Alston, Westmorland and Furness

The Environment Agency records 5 historic landfill sites in and around Alston, Westmorland and Furness. covering roughly 11 hectares in total. The largest is New Shield Quarry at 4.8 ha. Recorded waste ranges up to industrial waste. Data: October 2025 revision.

Recorded landfill boundaries around Alston (indicative, digitised at 1:10,000).

All recorded sites, largest first

SiteAreaLast inputWaste types
New Shield Quarry4.8 ha1995IndustrialHouseholdCommercial
Mount Pleasant4.42 ha1972Waste types not recorded
Carrs Hill0.68 ha1972Waste types not recorded
Quarry Pool0.65 ha1984Inert
Morley Hill0.54 ha1978IndustrialHouseholdCommercialInert

What this data does — and doesn't — cover

  • Licensed-era records only. Waste licensing began in 1974. Older tips — especially small pre-war ones — are incompletely recorded, so absence from this data does not mean no landfill ever existed here.
  • Not the contaminated-land register. Councils hold a separate register of land determined as contaminated. A historic landfill entry is not a contamination determination, and vice versa.
  • Boundaries are indicative. Digitised at 1:10,000 scale; some are buffers around a point rather than surveyed edges.
  • Not a substitute for a formal environmental search. If you're buying, your conveyancer's environmental search checks this and several other sources.

EA Historic Landfill dataset, October 2025 revision. More on the methodology page.

Common questions

How many former landfill sites are there in Alston?
5 historic (closed) landfill sites are recorded within about 15km of Alston town centre in the Environment Agency's Historic Landfill dataset (October 2025 revision). Pre-1974 sites are incompletely recorded, so the true historical number is likely higher.
How do I check a specific address in Alston?
Search the postcode on Landfill Check — you'll see every recorded site within 1km, with distance, direction and waste types, measured to the site boundary.

Nearby areas

Worth reading: buying a house near a former landfill and what the waste types mean.