The only good thing that can be said about these gigantic tree covered spoil heaps, is that they have prevented the huge new warehouses spreading towards any further towards Stanion.
In the days before LIDAR, none of this would have been visible. #Postindustrialwoodland #Industrialarchaeology #LandscapeHistory

Here is a 1960's OS map of the same area at Stanion. In 1960 British Steel were telling everybody that these areas would be restored, but of course it hasn't happened.

#Postindustrialwoodland #Industrialarchaeology #landscapearchaeology

Some of the least known #Postindustrialwoodland & #Industrialarchaeology that is hidden by pinewoods are the huge furrows left by WWII ironstone mining at #Corby in #Northamptonshire. Under pressure to extract as much ore as possible to feed the war effort government allowed Stewarts & Lloyds to leave the pits unrestored, leaving huge furrows across the land, which I can remember seeing. From 1960 these furrows were planted with trees. These furrows are near Stanion.

@Nyddfwch I am also finding in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire & N Hertfordshire that almost every wood here today, is only present because earlier mining had left the land fit for agriculture. Here are ancient iron ore adits at Wakeley Woods in Northants for example. #historicalgeography #Industrialarchaeology #LandscapeHistory #Postindustrialwoodland

My script for #AncientWoodland (emphasis on Welsh cases) based on local surveys 2014 to 2019. One of my conclusions was that landscape often classed as Welsh Ancient Woodland was often post-industrial woodland or land severely damaged by coal mining even though the coal mining or iron activities may have ended in the seventeenth century or earlier enabling the current recovered woodland to present as Ancient. #HistoricalGeography #IndustrialArchaeology #LandscapeHistory #PostIndustrialWoodland