Decorative Stones at St. John’s Church

 

A detail of the reredos by Frank Tory

My day out to Morley, with the primary objective to have good look at the Woodkirk Brown sandstone from the Thornhill Rock used for Morley Town Hall, was successfully completed and having encountered numerous Nonconformist chapels, old mills and other historic buildings, I learned a lot about its contribution to the Heavy Woollen District. 

 

Scissors Paper Stone

A few days later, I set off to Ranmoor in Sheffield, to have a good look at the decorative stones used for the interior of St. John’s church – in preparation for a talk that I had been asked to give on the subject of “The Stones of St John’s – A Geological Assessment", as part of the Scissors Paper Stone community historic project by Mary Grover. 

 

St. John's church in Ranmoor

I had seen the exterior a few times, where Ancaster limestone has been used for dressings to a fabric that is built out of poor quality Upper Carboniferous sandstone, which Historic England had also strangely described as Ancaster limestone – a glaring error that they were very reluctant to change, despite me sending them photographs and emphasising my expertise as a geologist and building stone specialist. 

 

A view west from the chancel

 

On an earlier visit to the church, when waiting to meet the Secretary of the Ranmoor Society in preparation for a talk on the architecture and geology of Ranmoor, I noted that Ancaster limestone has been used for all of the interior when taking a few quick photos, but I didn’t have time to have a good look at all of its decorative stones – which include true metamorphic marbles and polished limestones, which are termed ‘marble’ in the stone trade. 

 

A detail of the chancel floor

 

Starting by having a look at the chancel floor, which on my first visit I noted was laid with white Carrara white marble, with edgings and inserts of a polished black Carboniferous limestone and what I immediately thought was Cork Red Marble – a Carboniferous limestone conglomerate with a red haematite rich clay matrix derived from eroded Devonian sediments. 

 

A detail of the extension to the chancel floor

 

What I didn’t notice at that time was that part of the chancel floor is laid with another red marble, of unknown provenance, which has a texture that is quite different to the Cork Red Marble. This was preumably chosen as the best match to the long since unavailable original material, when the chancel floor was extended into the nave during the reordering of the nave by Ronald Sims in 1991, with it also being used for restoration of the south chapel floor. 

 

The floor of the south chapel

An interesting feature of this floor is the colour of the white marble, which consists of bright white squares that are presumably replacements for the original stones that have become extremely discoloured, which is quite unusual in my experience, or that they need to be cleaned. 

 

The Hopton Wood limestone altar in the south chapel

Another polished Carboniferous limestone, the Hopton Wood variety from Middleton-by-Wirksworth in Derbyshire, has also been used for the modern altar. This has been widely used for panelling in the interiors of many historic buildings and good examples of this can be seen on the staircase in the main hall at Sheffield Town Hall and in the lobby of Sheffield City Hall. 

 

The reredos

The reredos (1888) is an exquisite example of stone carving by the eminent sculptor Frank Tory, who also undertook all the other architectural sculpture in the interior. The Last Supper and the flanking figures of St. Peter and St. Paul are carved in alabaster, which is set beneath an ornate Caen stone canopy, with trefoils and crocketted gables. 

 

A detail of the reredos

 

Getting closer to the reredos, I was interested to see that the canopy is supported by compound colonnettes, which are made out of Red Cork Marble and what I think is a grey/green variety of Connemara Marble from Co. Galway in the Republic of Ireland. 

 

Colonnettes of Cork Red and Connemara marbles

 

According to a Sheffield Telegraph cutting that Mary had sent to me, the pulpit (1888) was made by Charles Green and provides further examples of Cork Red Marble and polished black Carboniferous limestone; however on this occasion, I was more interested in the fossils that Mary had noticed in its steps. 

 

Kilkenny limestone used for the pulpit steps

Palaeontology is not my forte, but I am quite familiar with the corals, crinoids and brachiopods that are very common in the Carboniferous limestone of the Peak District National Park, but I had never seen fossils like these before. Making use of Google Image Search, the best result was Kilkenny limestone - a stone that I had seen often when temporarily working for the Geological Survey of Ireland - which further research seemed to confirm that these fossils are gastropods. 

 

The font

 

I finished my investigation by photographing the font, also carved from Caen stone with marble columns supporting the bowl, but I have yet been unable to discover its maker. The lighting of the font is not very good, made worse by the surrounding cast iron stand – a feature that the church wants to have removed, but to which the Twentieth Century Society objects. 

 

Rosso Levanto serpentinite

 

Getting down on my knees, with Mary standing behind me and illuminating the font with the torch on my phone, I managed to get a few decent photos of the columns, which I think may be Rosso Levanto for the central column and green serpentinite for the outer columns, which are all from the Alpine region of Liguria in Italy.

Serpentinite used for the columns of the font

Thornhill Rock at Morley Town Hall

 

A detail of the tower on Morley Town Hall

Although a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge had given me a good opportunity to explore the old textile manufacturing town of Morley, the main reason for my visit was to see Morley Town Hall (1895) - based on research on Dewsbury town hall (1889) a couple of years earlier, when I learned that the architectural practice Holtom and Fox had designed both of these. 

 

A description of the Thornhill Rock in the geological memoir

I was particularly interested to discover from the ‘Building sandstones of the British Isles', published by the Building Research Establishment’ and the website of Calder Masonry that Woodkirk Brown sandstone from the Britannia Quarry had been used for Morley Town Hall.

 

A further description of the Thornhill Rock

The Thornhill Rock from the Pennine Mddle Coal Measures Formation was highlighted by the Geological Survey of Britain geological memoir (1940) as being a valuable building stone that had acquired a high reputation in the building trades. As a geologist, I was particularly interested to have a good look at its physical characteristics and how it had fared after nearly 130 years. 

 

Morley Town Hall

 

Approaching it from the northern end of Queen Street at 11:25 am, having stopped to look at the war memorial in Scatcherd Park, I was a little disappointed to see that its main façade, which has a north-easterly aspect, was already in the shade. 

 

The portico

 

Whereas my previous Canon PoweShot cameras would have easily coped with this, the Panasonic Lumix TZ100 which I reluctantly bought when Canon/John Lewis customer service refused to replace my camera – despite the shutter on my last G7X II model failing 3 times within the warranty period – sometimes struggles with less than ideal lighting conditions. 

 

The pediment frieze sculpture

 

Nevertheless, with some fine adjustments of the exposure, I managed to obtain some decent images of the pediment frieze sculpture, which is described by Historic England (HE) as depicting “justice seeking advice from the good Queen, surrounded by figures of Industries and Useful Arts”, but the description on the Morley Town Heritage Walk gives another account – although I can’t readily recognise the statue of Queen Victoria. 

 

A detail of the frieze sculpture

 

HE further describe it as being designed by G.A. Fox in a Classical style design with a Baroque domed tower and, in his entry in the Yorkshire West Riding volume of the Buildings of England, Pevsner particularly noted the portico with six giant Composite columns and a pediment and writes that “The scheme is clearly derived from the Leeds town hall”. 

 

Leeds Town Hall

 

Moving round to the south-east facing elevation, the masonry consists of fine sandstone ashlar laid in courses with a considerable bed height, which can be seen in the rusticated ground floor and those above, which are punctuated by pilasters that have very large Corinthian capitals.

 

The south-east elevation

 

Moving closer to this elevation and taking a look at the masonry, which has evidently been cleaned – sandblasted 1972/1973 according to the Yorkshire Evening Post - I didn’t notice any marked deterioration or sections where it has been obviously restored and the fine grained Woodkirk Brown sandstone used appears to be in very good condition. Similarly, my general photographs of the Corinthian capitals and other high level details, don’t show any obvious deterioration of the stone. 

 

Views of the south-east elevation

 

Surprisingly, the Expected Durability and Performance section of the Building Research Establishment (BRE) report on the series of laboratory tests undertaken on the Woodkirk Brown sandstone states that “Woodkirk appears to be a durable stone but its failure in the acid immersion test indicates limited resistance to acid rain or air pollution”. 

 

An extract from BRE report on Woodkirk Brown sandstone

 

I didn’t spend any time closely examining the stonework of the historic buildings that I noticed when walking around Morley, but several buildings that I photographed were quite blackened and old photographs from the 1960’s, published in the Yorkshire Evening Post, show that the sulphurous emissions produced by the numerous mills in Morley must have been considerable. 

 

Face bedding in the rusticated ground floor masonry

 

Having specialist interests in building stone, first acquired more than 35 years ago when working in the building restoration industry, my eye is trained to observe defects in stonework and I immediately noticed the delamination of some face bedded blocks of stone in the rusticated masonry around the front entrance. 

 

The Weaver

 

Here I was very interested to see The Miner and The Weaver sculptures, carved in Woodkirk Brown stone by the Dewsbury based artist Melanie Wilks back in 2007, which commemorate the coal mining and textile manufacturing industries on which Morley prospered. 

 

The Miner

 

I finished my very brief look at the exterior of Morley Town Hall by photographing the foundation stone laid on 8th October 1892 by Alderman Thomas Clough - the Mayor of the Borough of Morley – which incorporates a gold painted inscription on a plaque made of polished Peterhead granite, from the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland. 

 

The foundation stone

 

Listed Buildings on Queen St. in Morley

 

An ornate scrolled bracket on the former HSBC bank

The British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge that I had prepared for Morley was quite varied, with a milepost and St. Peter’s church after I had alighted from the No. 51 bus on Victoria Street, then doubledecker houses on Chapel Hill, several tombs around the ruined Church of St. Mary in the Wood, a former woollen mill on Commercial Street and the Central Methodist Church. 

 

Victorian buildings on Queen Street

 

With the Nonconformist chapels being the highlight of my visit to date, I made my way back down Queen Street and passed several substantial later Victorian buildings that are quite impressive but, nonetheless, are not considered to be worthy of a Grade II listing. 

 

The former Barclays Bank and Figure Fitness Centre

 

Arriving at Morley Town Hall, the first of the four buildings on my list to photograph is described in the Historic England listing - last amended on 28th November 1986 - as the Barclays Bank and Figure Fitness Centre but, as with so many other bank buildings across the UK, the move to online banking has made this use redundant. 

 

Pediments on the Albion Street elevation

 

It doesn’t look like a bank building and was actually built c.1898 as a shop for the Morley Industrial Co-operative Society, which was founded in 1866 and had its first branch opened in 1869 on the corner of Albion Street and Commercial Street. 

 

The former HSBC Bank Chambers

 

Immediately adjacent to it is the former premises of the HSBC Bank Chambers, which Historic England (HE) dates as late C19 and goes on to describe its most interesting feature, the entrance, as “arched doorway with Gibbs surround and carved bracketed jambs, pulvinated frieze, swan-neck pediment under taller triangular pediment. 

 

A detail of the entrance

 

Another late C19 bank building, which is still operating as the National Westminster Bank is attached to its north side. HE considers that it has similar elements of design to the National Westminster Bank in Brighouse, designed by C. S. Nelson of Leeds in 1895 for the London and Yorkshire Bank Ltd. and that this is of similar date and by the same architect. 

 

The National Westminster Bank

 

All three of these buildings are presumably built in the local Thornhill Rock and exhibit fine ashlar masonry that would be expected in a high status property and the National Westminster Bank has a plinth made of polished dark grey granite, which looks like the Rubislaw variety from Aberdeen. 

 

Granite on the plinth of the National Westminster Bank

 

Looking at the 1894 and 1908 Ordnance Survey maps, the east side of Queen Street and most of the north side of Albion Street seem to have been part of a phase of redevelopment that took place at the same time of the building of the town hall (1892-1895). Although two large woollen mills still operated to the west of it, the area now seems to be considered as a centre of commerce and all of the buildings above are listed for group value to reflect this. 

 

The 1894 and 1908 OS maps of central Morley

To the north-east of the town hall, on the corner of Queen Street and Wellington Street is the Grade II Listed former Lloyds Bank (1891)., which is also scheduled for group value. Again it is built with fine ashlar masonry in a Neoclassical style, with a rusticated ground floor, alternating segmental and triangular pediments to the first floor windows and a doorway, which HE describes as “doorway with keyed arch, imposts and fluted Doric pilasters surmounted by fluted brackets, entablature and open triangular pediment”. 

 

The former Lloyds bank

Commercial Street in Morley

 

A hand shake and heart motif on a former warehouse

Having encountered 5 former Nonconformist chapels within a distance of less than 400 metres, since leaving the Church of St. Mary in the Wood, it seemed natural to dedicate my last Language of Stone Blog post to all of those that I unexpectedly encountered during my walk around Morley. 

 

Commercial Street on the 1854 OS map

Resuming the account of my day out at the north end of Commercial Street, the 1854 edition of the Ordnance Survey (OS) map, which was surveyed from 1847 to 1852, shows that this was an essentially undeveloped lane to the south of the ancient town centred on the area around Morley Bottoms – with ribbon development along Queen Street, where a manor house, a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and a Primitive Sunday school are marked. 

 

The growth of the population of Morley

 

During the second half of the C19, as with all of the northern towns and cities set on the Pennine Coal Measures Group strata, the mechanised production of the local industry – fired by the locally mined coal – had led to an exponential growth in the population, which the Census records as rising from 13057 in 1851 to 38404 in 1901, before flattening off in the early C20. 

 

Commercial Street on the 1908 OS map

 

The 1908 edition of the OS map shows that the area to either side of Commercial Street had been densely developed with a mixture of woollen mills and other commercial buildings set amongst blocks of back-to-back terraced houses, with chapels and schools scattered amongst them. 

 

The former Gas Office

 

The first building to catch my eye as I walked south down Commercial Street was the former Gas Office, dating to the first half of the C19, which is not listed but has some interesting features. It combines quite thinly coursed rock-faced walling and massive stone dressings, with an ornate door surround that has cable moulding and pink Peterhead granite columns with Corinthian capitals. 

A Peterhead granite column

Next to this is Thorp House, a pair of semi-detached houses that have the same pattern of walling stone and dressings and first appear on the 1894 OS map. The two houses have different designs but, although quite substantial and with the appearance of being built for occupants with moderate social status, the larger house actually has a back-to-back layout. 

 

Thorp House

 

The properties that were built next to this have been demolished, with a car park occupying the plot of land, but just beyond this is the Grade II Listed Morley library (1906), which is a fine example of a building funded by Andrew Carnegie and designed by the borough engineer, W.E. Putman. 

 

Morley library

 

The relatively plain ashlar façade is dominated by the very elaborate Neoclassical style portal, which has columns with elaborate Ionic capitals with an entablature supporting a segmental pediment and a tympanum with a floriated carved cartouche. 

 

The segmental pediment with the floriated tympanum and cartouche

 

Although not strictly relevant to this Language of Stone Blog, I was most impressed with its interior, with the Morley coat of arms laid out in mosaic, the colourful Art Nouveau Burmantofts faience tiles in the entrance lobby and staircase and the frieze, which were all created by T.K. Yeates of Leeds. 

 

Views of the interior of Morley library

 

Just beyond the library, I got a view of the tower of Morley Town Hall, along with a brick chimney that I thought must be part of a textile mill, but the 1908 OS map or the Morley Community Archives and Yorkshire Industrial Heritage websites make no reference to this. 

 

A chimney and the tower of Morley Town Hall

In front of this on Commercial Street is a substantial late C19/early C20 13 bay and 3 storied building, with a stone frontage, which forms part of a complex of buildings that the chimney seems to be part of, but again there is mention of this building. 

 

A possible warehouse building on Commercial Street

The building has a very ornate surround to the arch above the central main entrance, which has a decorated keystone surmounted by a beehive, with floriated spandrels to each side that include motifs of a pair of scales and shaking hands with a heart above it. These can refer to an idealised collective society, partnership and cooperation and fairness respectively, although I am far from being an expert on such symbolism in architecture. 

 

A detail of the entrance to the former warehouse

A clue to its use, which is likely to be as a warehouse, comes from an inscription above the splay of the building on the corner of Commercial Street and Albion Street, against which it was built, which describes it as the Industrial Co-operative Society Stores Limited (1869). 

 

The former Morley Industrial Co-operative Society building

 

The Morley Industrial Co-operative Society was founded in 1866, with the Albion Street building being its first branch and, from some online research I have discovered that the use of a beehive, which sits above the inscription, has a long history in the Co-operative movement. 

 

The inscription with the beehive

Both of these buildings repeat the pattern of thinly coursed rock-faced walling stone, with massive sandstone dressings, which can again be seen in Stoneleigh House - a substantial house that was built during this period of rapid expansion in Morley. 

 

Stoneleigh House

 

On the opposite corner is another substantial building that is marked on the 1894 OS map as ‘Hall’, which is built with deeper courses of rock-faced Thornhill Rock, with massive sandstone used as cills and heads to the windows, band courses, voussoirs and panels to the central first floor window, which have a compass and set square and a mallet and chisel cut into them – symbols that are typically seen on a Freemasons' lodge. 

 

The former Freemasons' lodge

 

I was particularly interested to see that the Thornhill Rock voussoirs alternate with a dull red sandstone which, when enlarging my photographs, I can see has differential weathering of laminations that highlight its bedding characteristics. 

 

A detail of red sandstone voussoirs

 

I think that this is most likely to be Red Mansfield stone - a sandy variety of the Upper Permian Cadeby Formation - which the railway connections at the time would have provided the architect with the opportunity to readily specify. 

 

The entrance to Peel mill

 

Continuing along Commercial Street beyond the large brick built former Peel mill, which was largely rebuilt after a fire in 1915, which a datestone on the infilled entrance records, I finished at the Commercial Inn (1906), another fine unlisted building on the corner with Middleton Road.

 

The Commercial Inn