Deep Pit

Lamp light is the only light down here, and there is never enough of it. From the cage landing a main road runs off into the dark, laid with narrow rails and lined with timber props that bow under the weight above. Coal-black walls glint where ore threads through them. At each level a lamp station sits in a whitewashed niche with a bench, a first-aid box and a row of iron hooks. Heavy ventilation doors of canvas and timber hang across the haulage roads and bang shut behind every draught. Water drips. The dark goes on ahead. On the deepest working level the props are older and the roof hangs lower, and abandoned stalls stand empty behind a line of wooden mangers. One wall there is newer brick set into old stone, with a ragged gap at its foot. Warm air, wet ochre floors, rust on every bolt. Somewhere behind the rock, the pumps keep beating.