Patten's Quarry

After a 400-and-something-step climb the ground opens into the vast bowl of Patten’s Quarry. Huge beeches form a stockade, their great buttress roots showing the most recent attempts to excavate the limestone. The winter sun struggles to reach the meadow, which in mid summer would be awash with bee orchids and bee beetles. It is now empty, except for a towering yew. There is a 20m tall sheer rock face at one end; the other end is open, gaping out down the gorge, where the Severn snakes away. The town of Ironbridge is a mere 300m below and although you can see it, it can’t see you. I descend through the woods down the old railway line and before I know it I’m back amongst the hustle and bustle of the Ironbridge tourists. Little do they know that above them lies a quarry, which produced the limestone for the iron of the world famous bridge, and nowadays produces some of the county’s best sightings.