On Bell's Hill

I took a walk around the land to the south and west of the school site last Thursday afternoon. It helps to put the site into context and it is also useful to have some of the research in mind when looking at the landscape.

First thing to note is the hedges. A lot of the hedges are fairly recently planted yet lie along the lines of the historic field patterns. This must be where the hedges have been replaced as the land was re-instated following the opencast mining that happened here. By looking for the new hedges it is easy to see the extent of the mining activity.

Close to the site is Nanny's Nursery - a narrow strip of trees (large oak and beech mainly) that continue the hedge line over the brow of the hill. There are a lot of larger boulders amongst the grass here which belong to the natural geology of the place - a rough sandstone I think. I found coal here too - maybe a co-incidence but surely this is left from the mitigation work done after the mining.

The weather wasn't great but it was nice to be out amongst the Spring landscape with vetches and cow parsley flowering and larks and swallows in the sky above. A contrast to the work that will happen on site and the technology that will be employed there. The hills to the south where lit up by hedges and fields of gorse, probably what this hill would have looked like once upon a time but today the fields are given over to wheat, mustard, sheep and cows.

I carried on further round the back of Bell's Hill and dropped down to Highfield Road before walking back up the hill beside the school. A field to the right here still bears the scars of older mining activity - the 'shake holes' of the early edition OS maps. The tyre marks on the grass help identify the folds of the land.


A walk like this really helps to enforce the rural context of the site. Newcastle is clear to the east but in all other directions it is fields and woods with houses and roads dotted about. From up on the hill looking north you could be fooled into thinking that the area isn't particularly hilly but when you look at a map you realise that the valleys run east-west which helps to lose the hills into the landscape. This walk also forces home the significance of green in my thoughts for this project.