First of all, I get totally distracted (in a good way) by all the lovely pix that show up at the top of the threads.  Sometimes one of my old ones show up and I cringe because when I first started submitting photos, they were completely unaltered.  It was before our dear Peter Evans turned me on to Infranview, which I now use to fix my pix.

But I came across this one yesterday and I absolutely love it.  My question is this:  See the area that shows a gouge in the hillside?  Might that be an ancient quarry, or even a modern one?  With all the wonderful stone building projects that have gone on over there for the last thousand years, there must be a lot of old quarries.

Picture by Jane Elliff-Glennon

Could well be a quarry, but will need to do a bit of investigation starting with the original pic.

And surprise, surprise the original gives NO information at all. Need to look at some maps.....

Looks like one to me too, James.  My late father-in-law used to quarry.  Pennslyvania bluestone.

Hi Mike:  Is that the same as strip mining, or open pit?

Yes Ruth  open cast is surface mining  no shafts-still a couple round my way.-

away now Ruth have a nice day.