The Church of SS. Peter & Leonard II

 

A detail of the chequerboard pattern of marbles in the sanctuary

The distinctive striped pattern of the Woolley Edge Rock provides the exterior of the Church of St. Peter and St. Leonard with its character, but it is the painted plaster and colourful decoration that first caught my attention once inside the church.

 

General views of the interior

 

Since leaving Treeton, the morning had been very overcast with a constant threat of rain, which made the interior of the church very gloomy without the lighting being on and I was quite surprised to get a good a set of photos in these conditions. 

 

The font

 

After taking a few quick general photos, I had a wander around and the first thing that I noticed was the font (1866), dedicated to Betsey Lomas who is buried in the churchyard. The church website states that this is made with Portland stone but, even though the light was poor and I didn’t get down on my knees to inspect it with a hand lens, I have my doubts about this. 

 

A close up view of the font

 

My first thought was that this is another example of the use of Caen stone from Normandy, which has been used for fonts and pulpits at St. Mary’s Walkley (1869), St. Peter’s Birstall (1863-1870) and at St. John’s Ranmoor (1887) and also at Leeds Central Library (1878- 1884)

 

The inscription on the font

 

The bowl of the font sits on a drum with four columns, which is made out of a pink and grey marble. In the low light, I didn’t inspect it closely, but from my photos I can see that it contains crinoid ossicles and colonial corals, which makes me think this is a light coloured variety of the Lower Carboniferous Cork Red marble from the Republic of Ireland. 

 

A detail of a column on the font

Moving into the south chapel, which was built in 1920 to commemorate WWI, decorative stone has been used lavishly for the flooring, the altar rail and for wall monuments and these certainly tested my stone identification skills. 

 

Chequerboard flooring in the south chapel

The chequerboard pattern flooring is composed of a dark green serpentine marble with white calcite veins, which is probably from the north-west of Italy. Consulting Decorative Stone - The Complete Sourcebook by Monica Price and using Google Image search, the Verde Genova and Valle d’Aosta marbles look similar, but the variation in texture with these materials is so great that an expert needs to look at these and other marbles on display. 

 

A detail of the flooring in the south chapel

The other stone used in the floor is a white marble, with very pronounced dark veins that are surrounded by a yellowish staining. Price does not mention these varieties, but Marmo Paonazzo or Calacatta, both from Carrara, look most promising from a Google Image search. 

 

A detail of the panelling behind the altar in the south chapel

 

For the panelling behind the altar, Paonazzo and Calacatta are again possibilities, but the white and rusty brown alabaster used for the columns, wall panels and the rails of the balustrade is a material that I am familiar with, as seen as monuments and effigies in many churches. 

 

The altar rail in the south chapel

 

In England, the alabaster industry was based on the Triassic rocks found at Chellaston in Derbyshire, known for the purest light coloured material, with Tutbury in Staffordshire producing the strongly veined rusty coloured variety, which is the result of iron staining. 

 

A Lapis Lazuli panel in the altar rail

 

The newel posts and balusters looked like Carrara marble at first glance but, looking closer, it has a translucent appearance and a waxy lustre that suggests that this is in fact very pure white alabaster. Inserted into the newels are panels of a vivid blue stone, which I have never seen used as a decorative stone but I think must be Lapis Lazuli. 

 

A memorial made from green marble breccia

Another green marble breccia is used for a wall monument for which there are no details of who it commemorates. This I presume is also from Italy, as is the Carrara marble circular relief panel, but I didn’t get near enough to see what the deep red stone is. 

 

The Connemara marble wall memorial

The WWI wall memorial, with its book of remembrance, is another example of a green marble – this time Connemara marble from Co. Galway in the Republic of Ireland – a distinctive stone that I saw at an early age in the Geological Museum in London, at the Clifden Quarry and Trinity College in Dublin while working for the Geological Survey of Ireland and in Sheffield Town Hall. 

 

The floor in the nave

 

Returning to the nave, I encountered other polished stones in the flooring and for the altar rail to the chancel, including yet another green stone that I think is Swedish Green marble. In the lobby of Sheffield Central Library, this is used as small squares in the travertine floor and for capitals to Ashburton marble pilasters. 

 

A detail of the flooring in the nave

 

In the nave, it is used in a chequerboard pattern with a grey limestone, which I think is probably from the Carboniferous Limestone of Derbyshire. Although it was too dark to see its details properly and I didn’t attempt to inspect it closely with my hand lens, it looks like it contains large Productid brachiopod shells. 

 

Swedish Green marble and Carboniferous Limestone

Beyond the altar rail, the Swedish Green marble is a distinctly banded variety, which is again used in a chequerboard pattern with another grey Carboniferous Limestone; however, this limestone has a very different texture to the variety seen in the nave and reminds me of Hopton Wood stone. 

 

The altar rail

 

I have mainly seen Hopton Wood stone where used for decorative panels, notably inside Sheffield City Hall, where its fossil content is restricted to very fine fragments of brachiopod shells and crinoids. As with the other shelf limestones in the Peak District National Park, it does contain beds with brachiopods but these are more difficult to work and the fine grainer beds will have been used for the turned balusters to the altar rail. 

 

Broken stones in the chancel

 

In a few places, I noticed that some of the large slabs were broken where the floor steps up and it is therefore important that the stone is identified correctly, for essential repairs to be carried out with a matching stone. Moving further into the sanctuary, I noted that the Paonazzo/Calacatta had been used again and, with plenty of things still to do, I set off to further explore Horbury. 

 

Marbles used for the floor in the chancel

 

The Church of SS. Peter & Leonard I

 

The inscription on the pediment

Arriving in Horbury on the No.126 bus from Wakefield, I alighted at the High Street stop and walked up Queen Street to the Grade I Listed Church of St. Peter and St. Leonard, which was designed by the renowned architect John Carr and built between 1791 and 1793 at his own expense. 

 

The Church of St. Peter and St. Leonard

In Rotherham, I had encountered the Grade II* Listed Aston Hall (1772), Clifton House (1783) and St. James’ church (1756) in Ravenfield, as well as other country houses on my travels that he had substantially altered – the Grade I Listed Wentworth Woodhouse (1760-1804) and Heath Hall (1754-1780) and the Grade II* Listed Cannon Hall – and I was therefore  not surprised to see that it is designed in the Classical style. 

 

The portico on the south elevation

Except for the rustication on the first stage of the tower, which has four stages with a rotunda and spire, the fabric is built with sandstone ashlar and tall rounded windows and, except for the portico with its Ionic columns, nothing much caught my eye as I walked anti-clockwise around the exterior. 

 

General views of the south and east elevations.

 

On the east end, a motif in the form of a stylised cross is carved into one of the ashlar blocks, which has the letters AVG inscribed to the top left corner and the number 28 and possibly others in the right top corner, but I don’t know what its significance is. 

 

A stylised cross at the east end

 

Returning to the south elevation, the pediment to the portico contains a Latin inscription, which records that the church was built by the architect John Carr at his own expense in 1791. I tend not to take as much notice of Ionic capitals as the Corinthian order, but here they incorporate intricate egg and dart mouldings and acanthus leaves. 

 

A detail of an Ionic capital

 

The main reason for wanting to visit this church was because it provides a spectacular example of the use of the Woolley Edge Rock, a coarse grained sandstone from the Upper Carboniferous Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation. 

 

Details of the Wooley Edge Rock

 

Where I have seen it used in Wakefield Cathedral, the Chantry Chapel of St. Mary, Sandal Castle and St. Helen’s church in Sandal Magna, it has very well defined cross-bedding, where beds of iron rich sediment with a purplish colour give it a very distinctive striped appearance. 

 

Details of the cross-bedding in the columns

 

The Horbury History and the Wild West Yorkshire websites both refer to the stone as Dam Stone, which was apparently the same stone used to build at least the barbican at Sandal Castle. The geological memoir (1940) refers to the Woodmoor quarries at Newmillardam supplying stone for the restoration of Wakefield Cathedral, which has the same colour and texture and I therefore presume that the stone for the church came from here too. 

 

A detail of a column base

I didn’t notice at the time but the walling of south chapel, which was was added in 1920, contains a mixture of striped Woolley Edge Rock and a uniformly pale buff coloured massive sandstone. The condition of the sandstone throughout the fabric is good and I couldn't see any signs of restoration and I therefore can't give an obvious explanation for this. 

 

The south chapel

 

Moving round to the north side of the church, I took a couple of photos of the north elevation at a distance and then got talking to a couple of visitors who had a copy of the latest edition of Pevsner, in which it mentions that Carr – who had started working in his father’s quarry as a stone mason before becoming an architect - deliberately chose this stone for effect. 

 

A view of the north elevation

 

Up to this point, although an online search before my visit confirmed that the church would be open, I had wondered if this was in fact correct because I thought that the locked south door would be the entrance and I saw no lights on; however, these visitors pointed out the entrance on the north side and, before having a look at the interior, I took a photo of the vestry (1884).

 

The vestry

  

Planning a Day Out to Horbury & Ossett

 

A worksheet for my day out to Horbury and Ossett

After a very slow start to 2024 due to the very wet weather, although I did manage to get out to Cressbrook Dale and Pilsley in the Peak District National Park, the first week of April was spent taking another look at the urban geology of Sheffield – an initial visit to Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park, a recce of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens and Ecclesall Road for the next Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip and a second visit to Wardsend Cemetery. 

 

A Google Map view of the country between Treeton and Horbury

 

For my next day out, I decided to visit the Grade I Listed Church of St. Peter and St. Leonard (1791-1793) in Horbury, by the pre-eminent architect of the C18 in the north of England, John Carr, who was born in the town and designed and financed this as his final resting place. 

 

The Building Stone Atlas of West & South Yorkshire

I had taken notice of a reference to this in the Building Stone Atlas of West & South Yorkshire, first published in 2012 as part of the Strategic Stone Study, when I was very interested to see that the very distinctive striped sandstone was described as being the Woolley Edge Rock, which I thought I had seen at Sandal Castle and St. Helen’s church in Sandal Magna and at Wakefield Cathedral and the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin in Wakefield. 

 

The Building Stones of England - West and South Yorkshire

The revised version produced by Historic England in 2023 as part of the Building Stones of England series, however, describes it as Horbury Rock. I have been very reliably informed that this was undertaken as a desk top study, which would explain some glaring errors and omissions, particularly for South Yorkshire - where I possess a very good working knowledge of its geology, building stones and historic buildings. 

 

The distribution of the Woolley Edge Rock around Wakefield

During my trip to Woolley the previous October, I had seen more examples of the Woolley Edge Rock in very many historic buildings in the village and at an old quarry on my walk from Woolley to Darton, where All Saints church is built from distinctly cross-bedded coarse grained sandstone that I think is from this formation. 

 

Listed buildings in Horbury

 

Although I had encountered several Victorian churches and a few Georgian churches on my travels, I had not made any effort to travel a long way to find them. In early 2023, when drawing up a long list of places to potentially visit in the year, a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Horbury showed that, except for the church, more than 20 buildings required a photograph but, by the time of my visit, all of these had been photographed by other people. 

 

Horbury and Ossett on Open Street Map

Being determined to visit Horbury anyway, I decided that I would also go and see Ossett, where the Grade II* Listed Church of the Holy Trinity forms a very prominent landmark that I had seen very many times when driving up the M1 motorway.

 

An extract from the No. 126 bus timetable

This was made easy by the fact that the No. 126 bus from Wakefield to Dewsbury runs every 15 minutes and the journey from Horbury to Ossett only takes 10 minutes and, entering a postcode for a Photo Challenge for Ossett, I found 4 buildings in Ossett and another in South Ossett. 

 

Listed buildings in Ossett

 

To make my day complete, I discovered that Horbury Quarry had been identified by the West Yorkshire Geology Trust as a Local Geological Site, where an expanse of the Horbury Rock is still visible and, after I had walked back from Ossett, I could get to it easily from a public footpath.  

The location of Horbury Quarry

Wardsend Cemetery Revisted

 

A view of headstones in the 1901 extension to Wardsend Cemetery

 

The day after my recce for a field trip with the Sheffield U3A Geology Group - from the Sheffield Botanical Gardens to Endcliffe Park and Ecclesall Road - I returned to Wardsend Cemetery Heritage Park to coincide with a gathering of volunteers who attend on a monthly basis to clear vegetation and undertake other practical tasks.

 

A view along the public footpath

Having made an arrangement with Howard, who I had briefly seen with Hugh earlier in the week, I was introduced to various people and then I set off to explore the part of the cemetery above the railway line, where 2 acres of land just below the outcrop of Greenmoor Rock was added in 1901.

Another view along the public footpath

I had passed through this part of the cemetery a couple of years earlier, when walking from Burngreave to Owlerton, when I was very surprised to see an area of scrubland full of traditional sandstone headstones, which from a distance looked liked others that I seen in various Victorian cemeteries in Sheffield.

 

Old quarries on Brincliffe Edge

 

All of these headstones, I have always presumed, are made from the variety of Greenmoor Rock known in Sheffield as Brincliffe Edge Rock, which was extracted from several quarries on Brincliffe Edge and along the escarpment down to Hunter’s Bar and Brocco Bank.

 

Headstones of Anne Biggin and Ernest Faulkner

 

The simple slabs of Anne Biggin (d.1906) and Ernest Faulkner (d.1940) have essentially identical designs, which are a complete break from the Gothic form and are more akin to the kerbed headstones of John Dyson (1931) and Henry Lindley (d.1933).

 

Headstones of John Dyson and Henry Lindley

 

I didn’t closely examine the sandstone used for any of these headstones, but my initial impression was that they are not locally quarried Brincliffe Edge Rock, which is very fine grained and has a very distinct blueish/greenish colour. By 1920, Stancliffe Darley Dale stone from the Ashover Grit had become a common material for Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones and Crosses of Sacrifice in South Yorkshire.

 

The kerbed headstone of Eliza and Robert Hooton

From the public footpath, I could see that the kerbed headstone of Eliza Hooton (d.1928) and her husband Robert (d.1928) is made of a stone that I immediately thought was white Carrara marble from Italy, which has lead lettering – including the abbreviation B&CCS, which marks this as the work of the Brightside and Carbrook Co-operative Society.

The headstone commemorating members of the Austick family

Next to this is another white marble kerbed headstone, which commemorates Annie (d.1933) and her father Frederick Austick (d.1946) and his wife Ann (d.1958). Although I had my hand lens, steel penknife and bottle of hydrochloric acid in my rucksack, I didn’t think it necessary to apply these standard tests, to confirm its composition but, when enlarging my high resolution photos, I can see calcite veins in the marble that have been highlighted by weathering.

 

The headstone of Harriet Middleton

 

Behind these headstones is another white stone monument that commemorates Harriet Middleton (d.1936), which has inscribed lettering, but I didn’t attempt to get to it through the brambles and thick undergrowth; however, from my photos, I can see that it has a completely different texture, which weathered out shell fragments indicating that it is Portland limestone.

 

Carrara marble headstones obscured algae, moss and lichen

 

Without leaving the footpath, I could see various other headstones, dating from 1917 to 1955, which I thought were probably further examples of Carrara marble, but were partly obscured by red and green algae, moss and lichen and I can’t determine their texture from my photographs.

 

The memorial to William Else and his family

 

In addition to the sandstones, marble and limestone, I also encountered a few headstones that are made from various igneous rocks, with the most interesting being those that are made in gabbro, which are probably from the Bushveld Complex at Rustenburg in South Africa.

The memorial to members of the Newton family

One commemorates William Else (d. 1923) his wife Sarah (d.1929) and two infant children aged 3 weeks and 2 years, with the other dedicated to George Newton (d.1910), his mother Jane (d.1930) and his father Edward (d.1942).

The headstone of Tom Wharton

Another gabbroic headstone - a stone of unknown provenance marketed under the name black granite - is that of Tom Wharton (d.1933), an extremely dedicated fan of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. who was buried in an unmarked grave, but a crowd funding project, aimed at supporters of the club, enabled this to be made.

Grey granite memorials

Having spent over an hour looking at this upper section of the cemetery, I found a couple of medium grained grey granites that I didn’t inspect closely, but which may be Scottish, then got talking to Lynne, another committee member of the Friends of Wardsend Cemetery.

A plan of Wardsend Cemetery

Although we had never met before, I discovered that this was the same Lynne who had been sharing very many of my Language of Stone Blog posts that I had tweeted on the social media platform now known as X. Although the rest of the volunteers had packed in for the day, she kindly took me on a very quick tour of plots L to T.

The headstone of George Beaumont

Adjoining the path next to the railway line, the headstone – with a footstone depicting a football - records the accidental death of George Beaumont in 1877 who, when trying to retrieve a ball during a football match, climbed over a wall and fell to his death in the adjoining quarry.

The footstone of George Beaumont

Continuing to the headstone of Samuel Wood (d.1858) and his family, the use of Welsh slate is a great surprise, given that the best monumental grade Brincliffe Edge Rock was being produced in great quantities only 5 km away as the crow flies.

The headstone of Samuel Wood

My second very brief visit to Wardsend Cemetery ended with a quick look at the tomb of Charles Burgon (d.1894), of Burgon and Ball, which developed its reputation as a supplier of sheep shears and is still a leading manufacturer of garden tools.

The tomb of Charles Burgon

I just took a couple of quick general photographs of this and didn’t take much notice of the stone that it is made from but, looking at my photos of this very dirty tomb, it looks like that this could be another example of Kemnay granite.

A detail of the inscription on the Charles Burgon tomb