Just one picture for today, but a big one! This is a view, taken from our walk this morning, which took us along the old railway lines from the long-defunct mine workings of West Hallam and Mapperley, to Slack Road, turning towards the village of Mapperley before heading home again.
The picture is a composite of four, stitched together to make one long panorama, looking towards Mapperley, from Slack Road, close to Head House Farm. From here, you can just see the rooftops of Mapperley Village in the centre of the picture as well as Shipley Hill and Slack Road, on the far right.
The village of Mapperley has changed a lot over the years. Essentially a farming community, it was once a hive of industrial activity. Coal and ironstone were mined here in the 18th and 19th centuries, but more shallow coal mines had been on the site for at least two hundred years before then. Output was always hampered by the ever-present problem of poor drainage and communications. The advent of roads, tram-ways and eventually the Nutbrook Canal system, helped matters, as did the later arrival of the Railways which had a branch line built directly to the colliery at Mapperley. Now, with the mines all gone, the landscape has once again returned to a more rural idyll and the smell of hundreds of dairy cattle has replaced the stench of industry!
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