February 1st – Just on the rough side of Brownhills Common, a handful of yards from Coppice Lane, there’s a deep void in the land through the trees It may be the remnant of early surface mining, or the later evidence of hamfisted mineral exploration (the coal here was evident on the surface, so it was said; the grey clay also highly prized by potters), but it’s been here for decades; the spoil is piled up around it in mounds with fairly mature trees growing from them, which must date from around 1977, as the year previously, the whole of this side of the common had been flatted by a grassfire.
Every landscape tells a story This one tells of an industrial, blighted past, which we now sort of revere.
Brownhills holds some of it’s oldest secrets closest, but in plain sight.
BrownhillsBob's #365daysofbiking 