The Field That Keeps Its Secret

This never fails to make me smile.

That teardrop island and the stubby little peninsula — where the farmer at Aireyholme cuts around rather than through — mark where the ground has quietly given up. They sit at the outer edge of the old Roseberry Mine ironstone workings.

The miners used what they called “bord and pillar” — cutting out chambers and leaving columns of rock standing to hold the roof up. Tidy enough, while it lasted. When the seam was done, they pulled the pillars out and walked away. The roof, having nothing left to think about, came down.

Ordinarily, with fifty or a hundred feet of solid rock overhead, the surface above does not notice. Here though, the ironstone seam runs almost embarrassingly close to the surface. The result is a scattering of depressions — some shallow, some deep enough to swallow a tractor whole and barely leave a dent in the sky.

Towards the far side of the same field, aerial photographs have revealed cropmarks of what appears to be an Iron Age or Roman field system — two rectilinear enclosures with associated boundaries, laid out with the quiet confidence of people who expected to stay. I keep looking from up here on the summit of Roseberry. So far, the field has kept its secret¹NYM NP HER No:  6475. Field system and enclosures south of Roseberry Topping. .

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  NYM NP HER No:  6475. Field system and enclosures south of Roseberry Topping.