On the country side of the rail tracks, Victorian picks and shovels once turned a hill into a hollow. After the quarrying ended, the landscape of Cox’s Hill was left contoured like a sports stadium – a flattish, sparsely grassed central pitch surrounded by stepped terracing on three sides, the west bank having been sliced away by the railway cutting. Crowds came to stand there over the ensuing decades – crowds of birches, sycamores, and bramble thickets.
The town fireworks were held in this wood-fringed bowl every year before the pandemic. In lockdown, townspeople crossed the bridge to breathe in its green lungs and children played.
