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| Excavated Rotherham Red sandstone at the Newman School |
The first week of August 2022 proved to be geologically very interesting, with trips undertaken to see the Wickersley Rock at Wickersley and Bramley, the Mexborough Rock at Brinsworth and the Loxley Edge Rock and the Rough Rock at Hagg Stones and Oughtibridge respectively.
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| Listed buildings at Moorgate and Whiston requiring photos |
For my next afternoon out, my plan was to go into Rotherham again to photograph ten listed buildings in the area around Moorgate and Whiston, which I had identified through the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge.
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| Thomas Rotherham College |
My first stop was Thomas Rotherham College (1876), designed by W.G. Habershon and A.R. Pite of London and built by the contractor L.B. Moore of Bedford with rock-faced Rotherham Red sandstone walling and Jurassic oolitic limestone dressings.
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| Bath stone coping stones at Thomas Rotherham College |
Some of this limestone, which I think is 'Bath stone', appeared in the boundary wall to Boston Castle and the solitary specimen of a star shaped Pentacrinites crinoid ossicle was just one of very many interesting stone related features used by the Victorians to decorate Boston Park. Rotherham MBC have since just neglected this wonderful park and so many features have been removed, vandalised or become so densely overgrown thgat they are no longer visible.
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| A pier constructed with sandstone and limestone |
After photographing the milepost opposite Moorgate Grove, I walked at a leisurely pace down the shady side of Moorgate Road until I reached the main entrance to Rotherham General Hospital, where I went to find the next building on my list, Oakwood Hall (1856-59).
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| Moorgate Hall |
Now an administrative building for Rotherham Health Authority, it was originally built in the Neoclassical style for James Yates, a great nephew of Samuel Walker I, who eventually took over the Walker family’s foundry business and expanded its range of cast and forged iron products.
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| Moorgate Hall |
Interestingly, like Clifton House (1783), Thundercliffe Grange (1776-85), Morthen Hall (early C18) and Swinden House (c.1880), the house is not built in Rotherham Red sandstone, but a light brown sandstone – probably from one of the formations such as the Parkgate Rock or the Silkstone Rock to the north of Rotherham. Although used for many churches, a few civic buildings and several villas on Moorgate, Rotherham Red sandstone is not a first rate building stone and architects seemed not to favour this material for their country houses.
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| A pile of excavated Rotherham Red sandstone at the Newman School |
Continuing down Moorgate Road past the milestone in front of No. 229, I turned onto East Bawtry Road, where I wanted to see if I could get near enough to the Newman School (1939) to photograph it. Seeing that the gates were open and contractors were on site, I went to investigate and was paricularly interested to see a large waste pile of Rotherham Red sandstone.
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| Massive Rotherham Red sandstone |
Walking up to the school, I discovered that the headmaster was on site and, having explained my interest in photographing the school and that I was also a geologist, I was given permission to look at the area where the Rotherham Red sandstone was being excavated to enable the construction of a new extension.
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| Flaggy Rotherham Red sandstone |
Although I was standing at quite a distance from the excavated rock faces, from my photographs that I took using the zoom lens on my Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II camera, I can see that the lower part of the exposure - approximately 4 ½ metres high - was composed of massive sandstone but the upper section was very flaggy.
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| Sandstone from the Newman School (coin = 22 mm diameter) |
Taking advantage of my permission to photograph the rear elevation of the school, I took advantage of my proximity to the rock waste tip to take a sample, before leaving the site and heading back to West Bawtry Road, where another milepost is set against a large retaining wall built in a Triassic red sandstone of unknown provenance.
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| A milestone on West Bawtry Road |
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