South Yorkshire Times, May 30th, 1970
Putting a ‘Carpet’ on a Colliery Tip
Landscape artists are hard at work in the Cadeby and Mexborough areas – painting a new face on countryside scarred by the Coal Board’s ravaging black monsters, the tips.
Our pictures capture the artists at work on a tip beside the winding Cadeby – Mexborough road. Here a massage of top soil is smoothing away the wrinkles as the monsters retreat under the onslaught.
Very soon the site will return to its former glory – carpeted in lush green grass. It is part of the Coal Board’s plan to give a new lease of life to land that has coughed and spluttered under a man-made burden for so long.
The biggest scar on the landscape for miles around the Mexborough district – the mammoth Denaby Colliery tup on Pastures Road may become one of the area’s most attractive sites.
Stark heap
The stark, mountainous slag heap has cast its black shadow over Mexborough and Denaby for over 20 years. Now it is to be grassed over, and a Wath Area H.Q. spokesman envisages “a smooth grassy slope, with maybe even some trees on it.”
The spokesman added: “The idea is to make them picturesque sights, instead of black tips that hit you in the eye whenever you approach them. Once the grass has caught hold and the basic vegetation is there it attracts all sorts of other plants.”
It may be a number of years before the project finally bears fruit – but for the sake of our beleaguered countryside it will be worth waiting for.
A bulldozer levels out the top soil which has been tipped on to the tip