Phillipa Klaiber

'Last of the Free Miners' is an on going project documenting the few remaining Free Miners of the Forest of Dean. The practice itself is no different to conventional mining; it is the traditions of eligibility combined with the modernisation of such an industry that make it so unusual. The mines that remain today are hidden away within the forest, each worked by two or three men. As a whole, the series endevours to document the working lives of the Free Miners and their Forest, exploring both recent changes in the landscape and those made hundreds of years ago in the ancient iron mines that have since been reclaimed by the forest. In our society of vast industrial and commercial growth, the Free Miners of the Forest of Dean represent a more traditional way of life that is easily forgotten.

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