Church Street

Church Street

During my exploration of the village of Wales, to get a general appreciation of the topography and the building materials used in its oldest buildings, no exposures of the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation have been seen to date but, walking up Church Street, there are several examples of its use in modest historic vernacular buildings.

The Old Rectory

It is a fine grained, laminated sandstone that is light buff and green-grey in colour when fresh but, when weathered, it forms a patina that can be deep orange/brown – a reflection of its high iron content; furthermore, the beds of silt that are usually found in Carboniferous sandstones of this age are differentially weathered and have been scoured out by the elements.

Vernacular architecture on Church Street

Compared to the “Rotherham Red” sandstone and the Magnesian Limestone, it is a very inferior building stone and can only be seen as irregularly coursed rubble walling in the oldest parts of the various buildings on Church Street - or recycled in later phases of construction.

The Duke of Leeds

Looking around, whilst walking up the gentle slope from Wales War Memorial to St. John the Baptist church, the boundary walls are generally built in Magnesian Limestone but - once inside the churchyard - the first good view of this church is of the Norman north aisle, the 15th century tower and the west end of the Victorian addition, which comprises the nave and south aisle.

A general view of the church of St. John the Baptist in Wales