 |
| The Sheffield U3A Geology Group at Black Rocks |
Following on from my brief exploration of Rawmarsh, in Rotherham, my next day out was with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group on a field trip along the High Peak Trail in the Peak District National Park, for which I had undertaken a recce 3 weeks earlier with Stuart - our leader on the day.
 |
| Page 1 of the report on the geology field trip |
Our walk was based on Excursion No. 4 in the Geologist’s Association East Midlands Guide No. 63 (2003) by the late Trevor Ford, who was an expert on Peak District geology, but we discovered that many of the locations on this linear walk were no longer visible and my previous posts, Geology on the High Peak Trail - Part 1 and Part 2, describe the points of interest adequately.
 | |
|
As often happens when I assist with a recce, on the day itself I spend more time taking photographs to use in the subsequent report on the field trip, which I have included here, and there is no need to repeat these observations. Once we had all finally gathered in one place at Black Rocks car park, after confusion with the Sat Nav co-ordinates that Stuart sent out in the itinerary, we took half of our cars to the Middleton Top Countryside Centre car park and walked down the High Peak Trail back to Black Rocks via the National Stone Centre.
 | |
|
After a very leisurely day out, Stuart drove us back to Hunter’s Bar and, after making my way back to Sheffield Interchange, I took advantage of the sunshine by having a pint of Guinness at the Old Queens Head and thinking about a visit to Catcliffe Glass Cone (1740) a couple of days later.
 |
| A pint of Guinness at the Old Queens Head |
Having noted one of my Language of Stone Blog posts on Facebook, Susan Kahler of the Catcliffe Cone Community Group had approached me to ask if I could advise them on the materials that had been used in the construction of the glass cone.
 |
| The information panel for Catcliffe Glass Cone |
Although I had passed by it innumerable times on the bus from Treeton to Rotherham and taken a few general photographs during one of my local walks during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, I had never taken a close look at it and was therefore interested to see its interior.
 |
| Catcliffe Glass Cone |
Having been picked up from my house, at the glass cone I was introduced to Shaun Pashley, the Secretary of the group and, quickly walking around the cone, I could immediately see that the plinth is built in the locally distinctive Rotherham Red sandstone.
 |
| Rotherham Red sandstone at Catcliffe Glass Cone |
Looking inside the cone, the lower part of the interior is also built in Rotherham Red sandstone, which I was actually quite surprised to see, given the very utilitarian nature of the structure and that it would have been presumably cheaper to have built it entirely in brick.
 |
| The interior of Catcliffe Glass Cone |
When asked about the source of the bricks, which is not my forte, I suggested that they were probably not made at an established brickworks but instead just used the local mudstone, which weathers into a yellow clay and is marked as the grey areas on the geological map.
The red bricks that were later produced at the large C19 brickworks in the region, as well as the biproduct of most of the coal mines, used mudstone that was ground down, mixed with water and then extruded through a die; however, looking at a piece of brick with the naked eye, I can see that the raw material was unsorted and contains large particles, which suggests that it was obtained from weathered mudstone of a kind that I find when digging in my garden.
 |
| A piece of brick from Catcliffe Glass Cone |
Having just taken a few photos and provided enough information for Susan and Shaun to supplement their own previous research, which took just over an hour, I was taken home and continued preparing for a day out to Dewsbury the following day.
 |
| A view inside Catcliffe Glass Cone |
No comments:
Post a Comment