This was a brief stop. The site wasn’t open and a small sign on the gate said it open Sundays 2-4 so I was 24 hours too early and I planned to be on the way home when it was open, so I just had a look from the pavement. And that’s quite easy to do as the engine house and headgear sit inexplicably but conveniently high up above the road.

Old photos show a much larger site than exists now with three shafts and associated surface infrastructure, but only the Hetty Shaft remains now along with its engine house that was built in 1875. Remarkably this pit closed in 1983, making it one of the older pits in operation at that time.

It’s not the easiest thing to photograph and there was no chance of getting a photograph for my typology without climbing a wet stone wall on a busy a main road (which I’d have to climb back down afterwards, which is the hard bit). So I contented myself with this photo which perhaps makes more of a feature of the writing on the road than the pit, but seems to work as a photograph I think.