Iron in its soul
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Version 0 of 1. The iron that supported the British industrial revolution was found in, and quarried from, ironstone deposits. The days of quarrying it are over, only ores richer in iron are marketable. The industry has left deep marks at Twywell Hills and Dales, now a nature reserve. The deepest is the gully that runs the length of the site, east-west, parallel with the adjacent, thrumming A14. The V-shaped gully cuts down into the ironstone, creating two-metre clifflets along each side. A loose tangle of brambles and white willows occupy the flat gully bed where once the quarry railway ran. The days of quarrying ironstone are over, only ores richer in iron are marketable A string of seepages emerge along the top of the northern ironstone wall. Water trickles out of the banked soil and flows and drips down the wall, depositing a coating of limestone and a smother of gloopy filamentous algae before pooling in broad and shallow expanses. Protruding from the mirrored surface are sprawling willows, struggling to stay upright in the thin soil, and in their midst the only remaining firm evidence of the gully’s former life, an iron mine cart, half collapsed, peppered with holes, rusting back into the earth. Most of the site is sculpted from mining spoil, six neat, kilometre-long ridges curve from one end to the other. Unfortunately, after the quarry shut in 1948, nearly half of the site was despoiled with a large Scots pine plantation. The thick bed of needles and dark pools, laden with mosquito larvae, are unappealing in comparison with the limestone grassland, dotted with little patches of scrub, that clothes the long steep banks when they emerge into the sunlight. It is still cool; just a single fat-bottomed queen buff-tailed bumblebee buzzes the sallow blossom, and a light sprinkle of violets are peeking through the grass. On the underside of a sun-warmed flat rock sits a black disk of large ants (Formica fusca), in their centre the queen; she is glossy and twice their size. Upon exposure the ants burst into activity, the queen lithely weaving back and forth as if commanding her troops. |