Since the last shift at Parkside colliery in St Helens clocked off in 1993 and its two shafts were capped, nature has progressively taken over: scrubby silver birches have seeded themselves on the hardstanding all over the huge site alongside the M6, which once employed 2,000 local people.
But peer through the trees and the piles of fly-tipped junk this week and there were signs of life: bulldozers were busy working on a taxpayer-funded access road, to join this long-neglected site to the adjacent motorway.
