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