As a boy, rushing south from Chesterfield on the train, I remember how the farmland was interrupted by the Avenue coking works breathing fire and acrid smoke like a malign dragon. Eight hundred people worked there, producing fuel for steel works, along with sulphuric acid and tar, in one of the most contaminated industrial sites in Europe.
The coking chimney and cooling tower – and all the rest of it – came down more than 10 years ago, and the air cleared. I had barely thought of it since, until, passing recently, I noticed through the carriage window reed ponds and luxuriant scrub.
At the end of a narrow lane, on the fringes of Wingerworth, a corner of the vast complex had been turned into a nature reserve split by the railway tracks and taking in a stretch of the Rother.
The old branch line that once fed coal to the plant now allows easy access for wheelchairs and a view across the ponds; in winter there are teal and wigeon.
I was drawn to the thick clumps of shrubs and trees – dog roses studded with hips tangled with a hawthorn smothered in haws, apple trees thick with fruit, a gnarled, low, ash still with its leaves.
Such a rich source of food brought scores of birds: a flock of goldfinches describing shallow dips though the air, half a dozen chaffinches and, deep in the green, trapped in a sudden burst of evening sunshine, the brilliant yellow of a siskin.
The Rother is a narrow stream here, half hidden against the railway. It must have suffered badly from its proximity to the coking plant. Now it is clear and vibrant, thick with weed. I can well believe there are water voles living here, despite the shiny abandoned microwave splitting the current like a reef.
Scraps of garbage and concrete barriers make for a semi-industrial wild space but I emerged from the tunnel beneath the tracks to a scene of wonder – a female sparrowhawk slicing between two trees, the scrub noisy with alarm calls and a shower sweeping in from the moors to the west.
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