Coal

While wandering around what is now Shipley Park, it is difficult to picture the area's industrial past. Personally, I find it almost impossible to imagine the coal mining which this area is famous for. As I have said to Malcolm before, coming from the flat, arable farmland of East Anglia, to me, mining belongs to another world. So, to see the remnants of that mining is very alien. This Photo was taken in about 1950 and shows the colliery where the Old American Adventure Theme Park now stands.

The 'winding gear' at the pit head in the middle of the picture is the same one as appeared in my entry of 6 November last year.
Looking at the next picture of the open cast mine at about the same date, you can see the trees on top of the hill. Strange to think, those are the trees through which we were walking this morning.

Old photos taken from Picturethepast.org
Looking from the hill towards the village of Smalley, UK Coal are once again mining in the area. This huge open cast mine was started after considerable opposition, last year and immediately transformed the area from rolling fields and farm land, into a scene from a horror film.

Massive machines eat away at the countryside, digging out the coal and dumping it into huge trucks.

The noise from all this can be heard easily from Shipley Hill as the trucks rumble around. We all know that we need the electricity which is to be generated from the coal, but lets hope, in a few years, when the coal seam has been exhausted, UK Coal return the area to the picturesque countryside we are used to. You never know, we might even get more beautiful parkland in which to walk and enjoy the wildlife.