bunn

The Heritage Gateway records no name for this hole, which it describes as a post-medieval shaft in a medieval extraction pit. The nearest named mine seems to be Hawkmoor Mine, but that's still some distance away and a lot lower. From Aditnow, I glean the existance of a West Hawkmoor Mixed mine, which is a bit closer to this than the Hawkmoor mine, and seems to be even more obscure.

The Ordinance Survey map doesn't admit this is a shaft at all, preferring to label the whole area 'quarries', but I think it's an odd quarry that has a great big deep hole going DOWN DOWN DOWN. If you chuck in a stick or something, you can hear it going for a while.

I don't know what they got out of it. I did manage to find a mention of a West Hawkmoor Mining Co. and a Mrs. Susan Bailey as Agent for it - but then my search hit a paywall, so I decided to live in ignorance.

The main Hawkmoor mine was a wolfram mine. I didn't know what Wolfram was, but I have now discovered that it has rebranded for the modern age, and now calls itself Tungsten. We actually have a recently-opened Tungsten mine not far away, which may be a Random Mine at some point. I'm pretty sure it won't look like this.

It is fenced off. More or less. This is a good thing, as it's one of Rosie's favorite walks and I let her offlead here as we rarely meet anyone apart from three dogs that she already knows well.

This is the path that goes past it, which the HER calls a medieval holloway, although it's not walled at all at this point. I think the big beech tree in the middle of the bank on the left was once past of a laid hedge along the top of the stone wall, but it doesn't look like it was laid for very long. It's now a large multi-trunked tree.