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Drilling for Coal at Dysart

That's not a typo! The drillers aren't prospecting for oil, but are doing geotechnical drilling to find out whether the Dysart Main Coal seam was ever worked in the area. This investigation is being made prior to civil engineering works getting underway. Luckily a 20 foot (6 metre) thick, unworked, coal seam came up in a diamond-drilled core today. This was good news for the civil engineers and geologist involved. After this a sixty-foot deep giant hole was dug to install deep sewage works and pumps.In the thick mist in the background you can just make out the outline of the 16th century St Serfs Tower. In the garden to the side of the tower, there was a historic 60 feet deep stair pit cut into the Dysart Main coal-seam. This primitive surface-pit was worked until the beginning of the 20th century and then it was filled-in on safety grounds.

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Uploaded on December 11, 2009
Taken on December 11, 2009