Betteshanger Colliery ceased operating in 1989, the last of the Kent coalmines to be closed by the government of Margaret Thatcher.  After decommissioning and removing the machinery, what remained of the colliery was buried on site and covered over with earth.  In 2004, these buried remains were brought to the surface for final disposal.  I was given permission to photograph the worksite and salvage any items from the mine I felt important for inclusion in my work.  The items I saved were miners’ work clothing, gloves and boots, tools, bits of twisted metal, electrical switches and sections of the conveyor belt that had once moved the coal from the coalface to the wagons that transported the coal to the surface.  After remaining buried for fifteen years, most of the items saved were disintegrating, rusting and decaying.  

When I arrived on site, there were piles of earth and detritus, uncovered by the contractors, that appeared to me at the time like ancient burial mounds or mass graves.  The landscape was blackened with coal dust, mixed with the chalk subsoil, it was a barren, lifeless and desolate place devoid of trees or plants.  I salvaged items for inclusion in my work and made plaster casts of small sections of the land so as to capture the actual fabric of the colliery that was rapidly disappearing and being removed.  The casts were used to make the panels (left and right above), these then became part of the quadriptych painting above.