I live amongst the hills south of Abergele, on a Roman road. Just behind the house are fields that contain the lead mines where they once extracted ore.
The Romans mined several metals in Britain, laying waste to swathes of what had been once pastureland.
Peppered across a swathe of local hills are evidences of vanished mineshafts, visible now only upon OS maps – the fields themselves having recovered long since.
They’ve returned to rich rolling pasture, dotted with fragile meadow flowers that dance briefly in the wind before being entombed in the hay crop, to feed next winter’s cattle.
This bean is a symbol of this suspended life, holding it’s promise of growth yet to come, and imprinted upon its surface are the excavated imagery of the wild flowers.
It was made from cast lead over an open fire in my garden, over looked by two mineshafts that yielded the same ore, all those centuries ago.