With things being a bit busy the last few weeks I’ve not been out filming as much as I would have liked to have been…so here’s a short video showing the scale of the vast Middle Peak Quarry in Derbyshire.
Middle Peak Quarry, Derbyshire.
There is long a history of quarrying and mining on this site in Wirksworth Derbyshire . Lead was mined here for about 2000 years, until the lead began to run out when the site changed to a limestone quarry. In the summer time the lagoons are popular with bathers, however at some point in 2015 the water was dyed black to deter people from swimming there. This was also the case at The Blue Lagoon at Buxton, however on a recent visit the colour has returned to blue.
They call it the Blue Lagoon, and people come from far and wide to cool off in its clear waters.
Yet the flooded former quarry is so polluted that its contents are almost as toxic as bleach.
Signs close to the shoreline warn that not only is the water known to contain abandoned cars, dead animals and human waste, but it has a pH level of 11.3 – compared with 12.6 for bleach and 11.5 for ammonia.
These images make up part of a project about abandoned quarries in the midlands.