About Corbie Rake
A rake is a vein worked open from the surface, and this one was followed until it became a quarry: a long cut into the fellside, the faces squared where the stone was good and torn where it was not. It was opened in earnest when the branch came up the valley and there was somewhere for the ore to go. At the bottom, where the workings went below the water table, there is a black pool that has never been pumped out.
Corbie is the old northern word for a crow. They nest in the faces, on the pins and chains nobody came back for, and they have the place to themselves. The water is deeper than it looks and gives nothing back.
