Bordering two towns,
fallen between two stools, there survives a place where time has stopped still - a hidden valley - with a head full of millstone grit and a belly gouged by ancient glaciers.
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The whole axis from north to south is a geocronograph- a gouged gantt of 300 years of human activity- embattled by iron rings, fire pits and brimstone stoves, of billy’s, teasers and blueing houses.
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The journey to it is hampered by a palisade of ridges, whilst the old pack horse tracks are given mythical undertones by oddly balanced stones on gnarled and fissured fence posts.
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Half way down the timeline, where Washwheel rises- the great smoke, looming over the wildwood - is an anchor point for the eye.
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Its gaping crown of brick was a last-ditch chance to stop the choking downdraught on millpond days.
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Here the valley is so dark, the canopy so great that the tree moss is thick enough for ferns to grow.
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Beneath the shade of the chimney and the wonky voussoirs of the bridge, the brook, swollen with fallen parapets is littered with treasures unknown.
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Chamfered returns on squared off stone and terracotta stoppers for bleach gorged vessels long gone.
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Great pipes that once straddled the brook, hug the banks like abandoned Amazonian canoes; whilst crumbling earthworks reveal an epic shaping of the land to harness its power.
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There’s something reminiscent here of the great civilisations that lie beneath the turf and sand - lost in memory by the surge of the new, the tides of time, the haste of mankind.
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In our smartphone age - where we scroll and linger over distances measured between thumb and forefinger - the scouring becks and teasel decks teeter on the edge of memory.
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Andy Marshall is an architectural photographer based in the UK
![](https://www.digest.andymarshall.co/content/images/production/photos/61gngo8k3xefitx86ucdmfauihqoe7zhiebq/original.jpg)
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