Let's also not forget that the Pindale Scrins (background, second photo) are authentic medieval lead mines, and have been a Scheduled Monument for years, not that anyone would know - or enforce it. If this were somewhere more visible, some folks would be going berserk at the destruction that's taking place. There are known phreatic caves and pipe-workings within the quarry site too. The landowner wants £250,000 for the site and won't budge, despite planning permission for their business plans being refused outright, otherwise it would have been purchased by others to protect it by now. It's worth about a tenth of that in reality.
PDMHS, under the direction of John Barnatt and Jim Rieuwerts, spent literally years on an archaeological excavation and preservation of the How Grove mine site just up the hill, with paved crushing circles, coes, ore bins, etc., and it is all being destroyed in the pursuit of pretty pathetic machismo. Trying to negotiate with four or more boz-eyed male weirdos with large quad-bikes and jeeps up there is asking for a beating - I've been threatened before when photographing number-plates. God knows what the folks at Black Rabbit Cottage think, as this carnival literally goes past their house every couple of hours, every day. If it weren't illegal I would definitely be setting traps.
