I returned to Godstone Mine to photograph the progress of the Godstone Mine Diggers.  The tunnel has progressed another seven meters approximately since my last visit three weeks ago.

The Godstone Mine tunnel dig – Cramped and dusty, the soil is dug away and put into plastic ‘trugs’  a chain of cavers pull each trug of spoil through the tunnel and send the empty trugs back.  As I lay in the tunnel, soil was constantly falling off the roof and down the back of my neck, in my eyes and over the camera…..

I decided to work with grainy black and white and use the light from the caver’s lamps as much as possible, as the pictures  from the previous visit looked too clean and safe and failed to capture the atmosphere inside the mine.  These pictures are far more successful.

This tunnel will eventually break into a section of the mine that has not been seen for over sixty years, due to roof collapse blocking the entrance.  While the main tunnel is being dug, excavation work reveals cart tracks that had been buried in mud.  The spoil from the tunnel is used to fill in a nearby blocked passage with an unstable roof