Geograph - photograph every grid square

Rails once extended across the Ashwell-Cottesmore road, south of Cottesmore Sidings (now the Rutland Railway Museum), and these fields were once criss-crossed by lines leading up the escarpment (left) to the Cottesmore, Burley and Exton Park ironstone quarries. From 1920-25 there was a narrow-gauge rope-worked incline; from 1925-59 the Burley Quarry line climbed the escarpment on a south-to-east curve; and from the 1950s until final closure of the quarries in 1973 the Exton Park line climbed on a north-to-east curve starting just to the right of where I stood to take this picture. See other pictures nearby for more on ironstone quarrying in the area.