"D. H. Lawrence - Sons And Lovers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawrence D. H)

The gin-pits were elbowed aside by the large mines of
the financiers. The coal and iron field of Nottinghamshire and
Derbyshire was discovered. Carston, Waite and Co. appeared.
Amid tremendous excitement, Lord Palmerston formally opened
the company's first mine at Spinney Park, on the edge of Sherwood Forest.

About this time the notorious Hell Row, which through growing
old had acquired an evil reputation, was burned down, and much dirt
was cleansed away.

Carston, Waite & Co. found they had struck on a good thing,
so, down the valleys of the brooks from Selby and Nuttall, new mines
were sunk, until soon there were six pits working. From Nuttall,
high up on the sandstone among the woods, the railway ran, past the
ruined priory of the Carthusians and past Robin Hood's Well, down to
Spinney Park, then on to Minton, a large mine among corn-fields;
from Minton across the farmlands of the valleyside to
Bunker's Hill, branching off there, and running
north to Beggarlee and Selby, that looks over at Crich and the hills
of Derbyshire: six mines like black studs on the countryside,
linked by a loop of fine chain, the railway.

To accommodate the regiments of miners, Carston, Waite and Co.
built the Squares, great quadrangles of dwellings on the hillside
of Bestwood, and then, in the brook valley, on the site of Hell Row,
they erected the Bottoms.

The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners' dwellings,
two rows of three, like the dots on a blank-six domino, and twelve
houses in a block. This double row of dwellings sat at the foot
of the rather sharp slope from Bestwood, and looked out, from the
attic windows at least, on the slow climb of the valley towards Selby.

The houses themselves were substantial and very decent.
One could walk all round, seeing little front gardens with auriculas
and saxifrage in the shadow of the bottom block, sweet-williams and pinks
in the sunny top block; seeing neat front windows, little porches,
little privet hedges, and dormer windows for the attics. But that
was outside; that was the view on to the uninhabited parlours of all
the colliers' wives. The dwelling-room, the kitchen, was at the back
of the house, facing inward between the blocks, looking at a scrubby
back garden, and then at the ash-pits. And between the rows,
between the long lines of ash-pits, went the alley, where the children
played and the women gossiped and the men smoked. So, the actual
conditions of living in the Bottoms, that was so well built and
that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury because people must live
in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash-pits.

Mrs. Morel was not anxious to move into the Bottoms,
which was already twelve years old and on the downward path,