QUOTE : Parts of the works were being demolished prior to privatisation. For as far as I could see, cutting torches fizzed and flared and sent up showers of sparks from among the buckled girders. Heaps of waste smouldered in the mud between the huge corrugated sheds, giving off an acrid, low-lying smoke through which I could make out gantries crawling with oxygen pipes; muddy yards where the Mercedes, Volvo and Magirus Deutz trucks were parked in rows; the venous curves of a disused railway line – a bright, almost luminous green moss grew between its dull rails. As we walked past the shed now directly below us, I had seen what I thought were huge steel wheels piled on top of one another. They were already beginning to rust. This reminded me of how, at the turn of the eighteenth century, stone from France became cheaper than Hathersage grit. The grindstone industry collapsed, and work stopped in a day. Half-finished millstones are still scattered around at the base of the Peak District edges, for tourists to eat their lunch off.