Sons and Lovers

By: Lawrence, D. H.

"The Bottoms" succeeded to "Hell Row." Hell Row was a block of thatched, bulging cottagesthat stood by the brook-side on Greenhill Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in thelittle gin-pits two fields away. The brook ran under the alder-trees, scarcely soiled by thesesmall mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in acircle round a gin. And all over the countryside were these same pits, some of which hadbeen worked in the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing downlike ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little black places among the corn-fieldsand the meadows. And the cottages of these coal-miners, in blocks and pairs here andthere, together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of Bestwood.Then, some sixty years ago, a sudden change took place. The gin-pits were elbowed asideby the large mines of the financiers. The coal and iron field of Nottinghamshire andDerbyshire was discovered. Carston, Waite and Co. appeared. Amid tremendousexcitement, Lord Palmerston formally opened the company's first mine at Spinney Park, onthe edge of Sherwood Forest.About this time the notorious Hell Row, which through growing old had acquired an evilreputation, was burned down, and much dirt was cleansed away.Carston, Waite and Co. found they had struck on a good thing, so, down the valleys of thebrooks from Selby and Nuttall, new mines were sunk, until soon there were six pitsworking. From Nuttall, high up on the sandstone among the woods, the railway ran, pastthe ruined priory of the Carthusians and past Robin Hood's Well, down to Spinney Park, then on to Minton, a large mine among corn-fields; from Minton across the farm-lands ofthe valley-side to Bunker's Hill, branching off there, and running north to Beggarlee andSelby, that looks over at Crich and the hills of Derbyshire; six mines like black studs on thecountryside, linked by a loop of fine chain, the railway.To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co. built the Squares, greatquadrangles of dwellings on the hillside of Bestwood, and then, in the brook valley, on thesite of Hell Row, they erected the Bottom

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08PX7DD79
• ISBN13: 9798578034336
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 390 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 8.0"