Sandstone at St. John's Church - Part 1

 

A view up the tower and the spire

When I first saw the St. John's church in Ranmoor, back in September 2018, I was particularly interested in the use of Ancaster limestone for the dressings, which is very unusual for Sheffield, but I didn’t take too much notice of the sandstone used for the fabric. 

 

St. John's church

On my next visit on a bright sunny day in January 2022, it was the first step in my preparation of a talk that I had been been ask to give for the Ranmoor Society later that year, so I took a much closer look at the sandstone and was surprised to see that it is of a very inferior quality and that there is extensive spalling of the surface. 

 

A view of the Ancaster limestone foundation stone

 

Having spent much of my time in 2021 visiting all of the existing Sheffield Board Schools, when I also took good note of the surrounding historic buildings, I acquired a very good working knowledge of the building stones of Sheffield and the physical characteristics of the geological formations from which they were once quarried. 

 

Walling to the south aisle

 

I visited again in April 2022, when undertaking further research for my talk, but I was still quite puzzled by this sandstone because I couldn’t recall seeing anything like it in any of the fine architect designed historic buildings in Sheffield, which I had by now been photographing as part of the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. 

 

General sandstone walling and dressings

 

When the original church was built in 1879 by E. M. Gibbs and then rebuilt in 1888, high quality medium grained sandstones from Derbyshire and West Yorkshire had been widely used in very many of Sheffield’s prestigious buildings, which are still in very good condition today. It is therefore surprising to see such a poor stone used for its exterior, when Ancaster limestone had been brought in from Lincolnshire at great expense for use in the interior. 

 

Sandstone walling and Ancaster stone dressings

In July, when waiting for the Secretary of the Ranmoor Society, I had a conversation with the vicar, Revd Dr Matthew Rhodes, who told me that the sandstone in the interior of the spire had been deteriorating at an alarming rate and that this had been attributed by the architect to the mixture of limestone and sandstone. 

 

Sandstone used for a buttress

 

This is usually associated with very high levels of atmospheric pollution in industrial areas, where acid rain reacts with limestone to form calcium sulphate, a highly soluble salt that dissolves, runs down the masonry and recrystallises with great force within the pores of the sandstone. 

 

Sandstone used for a buttress

This is mentioned in my copy of The Weathering of Natural Building Stones by R.J. Schaffer, a seminal book which was published by the Building Research Station (now the Building Research Establishment) back in 1933, but which I think is still very relevant and explains so much of what I have seen in countless stone buildings throughout my working life. 

 

The Weathering of Natural Building Stones

 

Although I have not been inside the spire and cannot see the condition of its exterior, on the south elevation at ground level I can see instances where limestone overlies sandstone, the church is upwind of the polluting steelworks that were based in the Lower Don Valley and the extent of the decay of the sandstone cannot be explained by calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, which dissolves in water that has dissoved in rainwater, crystallising in its pores. 

 

Sites of old quarries around Oughtibridge

 

When subsequently asked by Mary Grover to contribute to her Scissors Paper Stone project, which included a talk - The Stones of St John’s – A Geological Assessment – she explained that there were no records of the rebuilt church, which were probably destroyed when the building contractor went bankrupt and Lawrence and William Bissett fled to the continent with company funds, never to be seen in Sheffield again.

Quarries on the Loxley Edge Rock around Oughtibridge

The only reference to the materials used was in a cutting from the Sheffield Telegraph, which reported on the opening of the church in 1888 that the walling stone was from Oughtibridge and the dressings from Ancaster. Looking at old Ordnance Survey maps and the Building Stones Database for England map explorer, quarries at Middlewood and Hagg Stones worked the Loxley Edge Rock, with the latter being the largest of these. 

 

Sandstone walling to the south aisle.

 

The year before, during a day out to Worrall and Oughtibridge, I visited the Hagg Stones quarry and collected specimens of the Loxley Edge Rock. When visiting St. John’s church in June, to photograph the decorative stones of its interior, I brought these specimens along and was interested to see how they compared with the sandstone used for its fabric, which is predominantly medium grained and well bedded. 

 

Sections of weathered sandstone walling

 

With a larger coarse grained sample from a massive bed at Haggs Stone quarry and a smaller finer/medium sample from the flaggy beds, I compared their colour and texture against several sections of walling, including one that contained a very coarse grained block that was more typical of the rock that I had seen at the type locality along Loxley Edge. Although not conclusive, the general match in colour and texture between the walling and the samples was actually quite good

 

Comparison of samples of Loxley Edge Rock

 

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

Thornhill Rock at Morley Town Hall

 

A detail of the tower on Morley Town Hall

Although a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge had given me a good opportunity to explore the old textile manufacturing town of Morley, the main reason for my visit was to see Morley Town Hall (1895) - based on research on Dewsbury town hall (1889) a couple of years earlier, when I learned that the architectural practice Holtom and Fox had designed both of these. 

 

A description of the Thornhill Rock in the geological memoir

I was particularly interested to discover from the ‘Building sandstones of the British Isles', published by the Building Research Establishment’ and the website of Calder Masonry that Woodkirk Brown sandstone from the Britannia Quarry had been used for Morley Town Hall.

 

A further description of the Thornhill Rock

The Thornhill Rock from the Pennine Mddle Coal Measures Formation was highlighted by the Geological Survey of Britain geological memoir (1940) as being a valuable building stone that had acquired a high reputation in the building trades. As a geologist, I was particularly interested to have a good look at its physical characteristics and how it had fared after nearly 130 years. 

 

Morley Town Hall

 

Approaching it from the northern end of Queen Street at 11:25 am, having stopped to look at the war memorial in Scatcherd Park, I was a little disappointed to see that its main façade, which has a north-easterly aspect, was already in the shade. 

 

The portico

 

Whereas my previous Canon PoweShot cameras would have easily coped with this, the Panasonic Lumix TZ100 which I reluctantly bought when Canon/John Lewis customer service refused to replace my camera – despite the shutter on my last G7X II model failing 3 times within the warranty period – sometimes struggles with less than ideal lighting conditions. 

 

The pediment frieze sculpture

 

Nevertheless, with some fine adjustments of the exposure, I managed to obtain some decent images of the pediment frieze sculpture, which is described by Historic England (HE) as depicting “justice seeking advice from the good Queen, surrounded by figures of Industries and Useful Arts”, but the description on the Morley Town Heritage Walk gives another account – although I can’t readily recognise the statue of Queen Victoria. 

 

A detail of the frieze sculpture

 

HE further describe it as being designed by G.A. Fox in a Classical style design with a Baroque domed tower and, in his entry in the Yorkshire West Riding volume of the Buildings of England, Pevsner particularly noted the portico with six giant Composite columns and a pediment and writes that “The scheme is clearly derived from the Leeds town hall”. 

 

Leeds Town Hall

 

Moving round to the south-east facing elevation, the masonry consists of fine sandstone ashlar laid in courses with a considerable bed height, which can be seen in the rusticated ground floor and those above, which are punctuated by pilasters that have very large Corinthian capitals.

 

The south-east elevation

 

Moving closer to this elevation and taking a look at the masonry, which has evidently been cleaned – sandblasted 1972/1973 according to the Yorkshire Evening Post - I didn’t notice any marked deterioration or sections where it has been obviously restored and the fine grained Woodkirk Brown sandstone used appears to be in very good condition. Similarly, my general photographs of the Corinthian capitals and other high level details, don’t show any obvious deterioration of the stone. 

 

Views of the south-east elevation

 

Surprisingly, the Expected Durability and Performance section of the Building Research Establishment (BRE) report on the series of laboratory tests undertaken on the Woodkirk Brown sandstone states that “Woodkirk appears to be a durable stone but its failure in the acid immersion test indicates limited resistance to acid rain or air pollution”. 

 

An extract from BRE report on Woodkirk Brown sandstone

 

I didn’t spend any time closely examining the stonework of the historic buildings that I noticed when walking around Morley, but several buildings that I photographed were quite blackened and old photographs from the 1960’s, published in the Yorkshire Evening Post, show that the sulphurous emissions produced by the numerous mills in Morley must have been considerable. 

 

Face bedding in the rusticated ground floor masonry

 

Having specialist interests in building stone, first acquired more than 35 years ago when working in the building restoration industry, my eye is trained to observe defects in stonework and I immediately noticed the delamination of some face bedded blocks of stone in the rusticated masonry around the front entrance. 

 

The Weaver

 

Here I was very interested to see The Miner and The Weaver sculptures, carved in Woodkirk Brown stone by the Dewsbury based artist Melanie Wilks back in 2007, which commemorate the coal mining and textile manufacturing industries on which Morley prospered. 

 

The Miner

 

I finished my very brief look at the exterior of Morley Town Hall by photographing the foundation stone laid on 8th October 1892 by Alderman Thomas Clough - the Mayor of the Borough of Morley – which incorporates a gold painted inscription on a plaque made of polished Peterhead granite, from the coast of Aberdeenshire in Scotland. 

 

The foundation stone

 

Listed Buildings on Queen St. in Morley

 

An ornate scrolled bracket on the former HSBC bank

The British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge that I had prepared for Morley was quite varied, with a milepost and St. Peter’s church after I had alighted from the No. 51 bus on Victoria Street, then doubledecker houses on Chapel Hill, several tombs around the ruined Church of St. Mary in the Wood, a former woollen mill on Commercial Street and the Central Methodist Church. 

 

Victorian buildings on Queen Street

 

With the Nonconformist chapels being the highlight of my visit to date, I made my way back down Queen Street and passed several substantial later Victorian buildings that are quite impressive but, nonetheless, are not considered to be worthy of a Grade II listing. 

 

The former Barclays Bank and Figure Fitness Centre

 

Arriving at Morley Town Hall, the first of the four buildings on my list to photograph is described in the Historic England listing - last amended on 28th November 1986 - as the Barclays Bank and Figure Fitness Centre but, as with so many other bank buildings across the UK, the move to online banking has made this use redundant. 

 

Pediments on the Albion Street elevation

 

It doesn’t look like a bank building and was actually built c.1898 as a shop for the Morley Industrial Co-operative Society, which was founded in 1866 and had its first branch opened in 1869 on the corner of Albion Street and Commercial Street. 

 

The former HSBC Bank Chambers

 

Immediately adjacent to it is the former premises of the HSBC Bank Chambers, which Historic England (HE) dates as late C19 and goes on to describe its most interesting feature, the entrance, as “arched doorway with Gibbs surround and carved bracketed jambs, pulvinated frieze, swan-neck pediment under taller triangular pediment. 

 

A detail of the entrance

 

Another late C19 bank building, which is still operating as the National Westminster Bank is attached to its north side. HE considers that it has similar elements of design to the National Westminster Bank in Brighouse, designed by C. S. Nelson of Leeds in 1895 for the London and Yorkshire Bank Ltd. and that this is of similar date and by the same architect. 

 

The National Westminster Bank

 

All three of these buildings are presumably built in the local Thornhill Rock and exhibit fine ashlar masonry that would be expected in a high status property and the National Westminster Bank has a plinth made of polished dark grey granite, which looks like the Rubislaw variety from Aberdeen. 

 

Granite on the plinth of the National Westminster Bank

 

Looking at the 1894 and 1908 Ordnance Survey maps, the east side of Queen Street and most of the north side of Albion Street seem to have been part of a phase of redevelopment that took place at the same time of the building of the town hall (1892-1895). Although two large woollen mills still operated to the west of it, the area now seems to be considered as a centre of commerce and all of the buildings above are listed for group value to reflect this. 

 

The 1894 and 1908 OS maps of central Morley

To the north-east of the town hall, on the corner of Queen Street and Wellington Street is the Grade II Listed former Lloyds Bank (1891)., which is also scheduled for group value. Again it is built with fine ashlar masonry in a Neoclassical style, with a rusticated ground floor, alternating segmental and triangular pediments to the first floor windows and a doorway, which HE describes as “doorway with keyed arch, imposts and fluted Doric pilasters surmounted by fluted brackets, entablature and open triangular pediment”. 

 

The former Lloyds bank