Poolsbrook

We are working our way south and have stopped for the night near to Poolsbrook Country Park near Staveley, Chesterfield, Derbyshire. It looks peaceful and idyllic and in many ways it is. But the area is socially struggling and generally financially poor. It used to be a busy industrial area with mines and ironworks and a large rail infrastructure to support it. It’s all gone. Some things remind us of the past, like the Miners’ Welfare Football Club. And the occasional winding wheel made into a sculpture. And on Google Earth you can still the see foundations of large industrial factories but now being overgrown with vegetation. We move on to Tewkesbury tomorrow, quite a different place, but the focus for a new Enterprise Area, free from planning and environmental constraints and similar in a way to the rail and coal barons who built wherever they wanted.