Entry tags:

old mine mess, suburban exploring

I took Kabuki and the lovely new camera zen_of_nihilism bought for me and went on a walk in the woods. I intended to get more pics of the grates/vents that are all over the area, but ended up getting distracted. See, I took a wrong turn, meandered down a grassy path instead of the shale ones the ATVs tear up, and think I found the main part of the old colliery's remains.


(Sorry to the Lj feed people--lj-cuts don't seem to work with the crossover!)

I have no idea what these are, but they were probably my first indication that I was headed in the right direction.

There's huge chunks of broken brickwork and cement blocks all over this area. Some of the cement stuff is still standing.





Some isn't.




I went wandering in between two of the big standing pieces, trying to figure out what they might've been, and ran across something I'd both really wanted and really not wanted to find: a hole with rusted metal railings, going down to a leaf-covered floor and a crawlway to nowhere.




For the record: when you've just been reading up on all the people that got killed in this mine and all the awful things that happen because of mines falling in, and when you're standing in the middle of who-knows-what while your up-for-anything doggie stands beside you and starts whimpering? Not heartening.


I filled my 32-mb memory card before I found a gigantic foundation, with a concrete floor that's mostly still intact. My only gauge of the size of this particular structure is how I walked for at least a minute or two, stopping every so often to scuff the leaves away and see the concrete underneath, before I found an edge.

I'm boggled. I keep trying to match it up to the very sad sepia photo I have of the colliery & assorted mine buildings from the early 1900s, and I keep failing. I haven't tried out our local library yet--that may be my next option.