Rock Tunnel

The exterior cut of a mine driven straight into a sheer ridge of dark rock. The portal is a squared opening braced with heavy timber baulks, blackened and split with age, its lintel sagging in the middle. Spoil from the excavation fans out below in a long grey slope of angular fragments. Rusted rails emerge from the opening, run twenty metres and stop at a collapsed tipping platform of rotten planks. The cliff face above is streaked with vertical water stains and scarred where blasting has shattered it. Scrub and small trees have colonised the flatter parts of the spoil heap. A cold draught pours steadily out of the opening. Beyond the portal the passage is completely dark within three metres. Broken tools and twisted iron lie half-buried in the gravel. Nothing here has been maintained in a very long time.