St. John's Church in Royston - Part 2

 

A view east along the nave to the chancel

Entering the porch of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Royston, Barnsley, having had a quick walk around its exterior, I was able to get a better appreciation of the physical characteristics of the coarse grained sandstone that has been used in its construction. 

 

The south door

 

Being sheltered from the elements, the sandstone has not developed a patina and the clean relatively fresh surface exhibits a pale brown/grey colour with pronounced orange staining that reflects quite a high iron content. 

 

The west internal wall of the porch

 

The well developed cross-bedding, with dark brown/purplish beds also gives it a striped appearance, which I have become familiar with in very many historic buildings around Wakefield and Barnsley, where I have thought that Woolley Edge Rock has probably been used for these. 

 

A coffin lid

 

To the left of the door is a stone coffin lid that was apparently re-discovered when new drains were laid c.1843 and is thought to date to the C12 or C13. I didn’t examine this closely, but it looks like it is made of dolomitic limestone from the Permian Cadeby Formation. 

 

The west bay of the north arcade

 

Entering the south door, my first view was of a tall arch at the westernmost end of the north arcade which, as I have since learned from the National Churches Trust (NCT) – whose description is based on the history published in the Church Near You webpage - is where the original tower was located, before it was rebuilt in c.1480. 

 

Stonework at the west end of the south aisle

 

As usual with my church visits, I just set about taking a systematic general photographic record of the principal elements - the aisles arcades, nave, chancel, chapels and the tower – and was more interested in another example of stripy iron rich sandstone in the section of walling at the west end of the south arcade. 

 

A view of the north arcade

 

Moving into the nave and looking along the north arcade, I noted that the three bays to the east are composed of very tall, wide four centred arches, which I immediately thought of as being Tudor in style, but the NCT states that the arcades date to c.1413-18. 

 

The south arcade

 

Viewing my photos 16 months later, I can clearly see that for the most part there is no toothing of the masonry between the two phases of the C15 construction, which show differences in course heights either side of the butted joints - a detail that I only recall having seen on the exterior of mediaeval churches, where porches, aisles etc. have been added to the original structure. 

 

An extract from Pevsner's decription of St. John's church

 

Pevsner found the arcade to be very curious and, for some very strange reason, describes the arch as having been cut out of solid wall and this is just repeated, without question, in the Historic England description, but this doesn’t seem to fit in with the evidence provided by the masonry. 

 

The clerestory above the north arcade

 

With the words “Is it?”, he goes on to query the antiquarian J.E. Morris in his description of the earlier three bays of the arcades as being Decorated Gothic, without giving an opinion on the date, before mentioning the “Tall Perp clerestory with two-light windows”. 

 

The clerestory above the south arcade

 

I have no formal training in architectural history and have relied mainly on Pevsner, Historic England, church guides and various online resources to help me distinguish between the various English Gothic styles; however, I can’t see any obvious difference in the stonework between the arcades and the clerestory above, which is usually seen when there are two phases of building.

 

The arch to the Lady Chapel

Looking east down the north aisle, the arch to the Lady Chapel, which the church guide says was enlarged c.1430-40, is very low and four centred with a similar shape to those seen in the eastern three bays of the arcades, but it is simple and without mouldings. 

 

Stairs to the rood loft

 

Walking down to have a closer look at this, another unusual feature is the stairs to the rood loft, which are built into the north wall – as also seen at All Saints church in Darton which, according to their website, along with St. John’s in Royston is one of five sister churches that have the same architectural design. 

 

The chancel

Quite unexpectedly, because it is alarmed, I could not obtain access to the chancel, which is thought to be the oldest part of the church, or the Lady Chapel and south chapel, where the arcades are in a more typical style, with octagonal columns and capitals and pointed arches. 

 

The north side of the chancel

 

From the altar rail, I could see that there are variations in the style of the masonry in the north wall that separates the chancel from the vestry, which is accessed through a doorway with an ogee arch that is considered by Pevsner to be probably Decorated Gothic. 

 

The monument to Henry Broadhead

 

Frustratingly, before I started my exploration of the church, I had briefly met the vicar who I am sure would have turned off the alarm for me if I had known that this was in place, but accepting that I would have to make another visit, I just took photos of the monument to Henry Broadhead (1747) and the C15 font, before beginning my walk to St. Peter’s church in Felkirk.

 

The font

 

St. John's Church in Royston - Part 1

 

A view of St. John's church from the south-east

Following on from a very enjoyable Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip in Knaresborough, a couple of days later I resumed my investigation of the mediaeval churches of South Yorkshire - at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Royston, Barnsley. 

 

My first view of St. John's church

 

Alighting from the No. 59 bus from Barnsley Interchange at the Royston Lane/Church Hill stop, a short walk brought me to Church Street where I got my first sight of the church, which Historic England describes as “Predominantly C15 in three building phases but incorporating work of C14” and Pevsner begins his entry in my Yorkshire West Riding volume with “Big Perp W tower”. 

 

The south elevation

 

When researching my Language of Blog post for All Saints church in Darton, which I had visited earlier in the year, I discovered that the church website says that it was one of 5 sister churches with the same design – with the others being at High Hoyland, Cawthorne, Silkstone and Royston. 

 

The west elevation of the tower

 

Certainly, the four bay nave and the seven bay aisles at Royston are similar to those at Darton, although there are differences in the styles of the clerestory windows, but the nave and aisles at Cawthorne are quite different and the mediaeval church at High Hoyland has been rebuilt.

 

The oriel window on the tower

Except for the west front of St. John’s church in Royston, which has an offset west door and belfry window and an extremely unusual five sided oriel window, the general design and detailing of the towers to these churches are all very similar. 

 

The west door

 

Getting close to the west door, I had a good look at the massive sandstone that has been used to build the church, which is very coarse grained, varying from grey to orange in colour and has well defined cross-bedding that is highlighted by differential weathering of the graded beds. 

 

A detail of the stonework adjacent to the west door

The nearest major sandstone formations are the Oaks Rock and the Mexborough Rock, but the sandstone looks very similar to the stone used at All Saints church in Darton, which I think is probably Woolley Edge Rock – a sandstone that was extensively quarried for building stone around Barnsley and which, according to the geological memoir, sometimes has a closer resemblance to those found in the Lower Coal Measures or Millstone Grit than to any of the other Middle Coal Measures sandstones. 

 

The geology around Royston

 

I had a quick walk in an anti-clockwise direction to take a set of general record photos to be used for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. The masonry to the south elevation looks uniform in appearance, with an even patina and covering of dirt and I presume that this was not included in the restoration (1867-1869) by John Loughborough Pearson, who developed a reputation for unnecessarily renewing the fabric of mediaeval churches that he worked on. 

 

Recent restoration work on the south aisle

 

The only modern restoration that I could see is the work to some windows and buttresses, where a uniformly buff coloured medium grained gritstone has been used, with no great attempt apparently being made to match the colour and texture of the original stonework. 

 

A grotesque on the clerestory

 

I took photographs of several fine grotesques that decorate the castellated parapet to the clerestory, some of which are quite weathered, before going to have a look at Royston war memorial in the churchyard, which is built with Bolton Woods stone.

 

Royston war memorial

 

Moving further round the exterior, the 4-light east window is described by Historic England (HE) as having Decorated flamboyant tracery, which is probably a C19 restoration, and the north aisle is noticeably wider than the south aisle - with a small square headed and cusped single light window in the vestry at its east end.

 

A view from the north-east

 

The north elevation of the vestry has window heads that are more triangular in form than the four centred arches to the south aisle and clerestory windows. Pevsner describes the internal door from the chancel to the vestry as having an ogee arch and probably Decorated Gothic; however, the tracery to the vestry windows look more like the Perpendicular Gothic style to me and it is possible that the windows are transitional between the two styles. 

 

The vestry

 

The earlier C14 Decorated Gothic windows to the north aisle are arched, with 2-lights and cusped Y-tracery and contrast with the later Perpendicular Gothic windows of the clerestory, which are probably contemporary with the building of the tower in the 1480’s. 

 

The north aisle

 

Continuing along the north aisle, I didn't notice any changes to the various styles of the windows described above and, after taking further note of the grey to orange colours in the sandstone, I entered the church by the south porch and went to look for a church guide. 

 

A view along the north elevation

 

A Field Trip in Knaresborough - Part 3

 

Stepping Stones House

Of the 12 points of interest that had been identified for the Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip in Knaresborough in July 2023, by the time that we stopped for our lunch at St. Robert's Cave, 8 of these had been visited and the afternoon turned into a much more lesiurely walk that mainly followed the bank of the River Nidd. 

 

The former Plompton corn mill

 

Crossing over Grimbalds Bridge and following the footpath, we passed the former Plompton corn mill, which is built in a reddened gritstone, but we didn't stop to look at it and proceeded to the river bank, where there is an exposure of the Lower Plompton Grit, which is pebbly and apparently shows trough cross-bedding, but we didn't spend any time looking for this.

 

A riverside exposure of the Lower Plompton Grit

 

From here, we had good views of the weir, where the Lower Plompton Grit also forms its foundations. On the adjoining river bank is Abbey Mill, another corn mill that the Mills Archive states once belonged to the monks of the nearby Cistercian abbey, which was actually the Trinitarian priory. It has apparently been rebuilt several times, with power being provided by water, steam and electricity, but it still retains its undershot waterwheel. 

 

A view of Abbey Mill and the weir

 

Following the footpath to the base of Grimbald Crag, everyone was too busy making their way around the tree roots to notice if this was the one referred to in Anthony Cooper’s Denys Smith Memorial Trip, which describes a path on the Carboniferous-Permian unconformity. 

 

The path beneath Grimbald Crag

 

There was no suitable point along this path for the group to stop and look at the yellow limestone of the Sprotbrough Member of the Cadeby Formation, which forms Grimbald Crag. I just took a few photographs, from which I can see that the limestone contains numerous vughs and solution hollows and has large scale cross-bedding. 

 

A view of Grimbald Crag

Just to the south of Grimbald Crag, the path crosses the Grimbald Crag Fault, with  a downthrow to the south that brings the mudstones of the Edlington Formation to the surface Although this formation was not exposed, as we followed the path through Birkham Wood, the poorly drained ground underfoot was muddy and care had to be taken where the path was very close to the river. 

 

The position of the Grimbald Crag Fault

 

On the Leeds Geologists Association (LGA) field trip guide that we were using, our next stopping point states that in the valley side above the path there are thinly bedded limestones of the Brotherton Formation but, although I could see what could be outcrops of these through the thick undergrowth, we didn't go and investigate them. 

 

A stream in Birkham Wood

 

The woodland that we were walking through and the riverbank opposite didn’t have any obvious landmarks to navigate by and nobody had a GPS device, so it wasn’t easy to pinpoint the next place on our agenda. Eventually, we came to a small stream that was traced back to an outcrop of thinly bedded limestone, where a spring forms at the junction with the underlying Edlington Formation, but water certainly wasn't gushing from it. 

 

The source of the spring noted in the LGA guide

 

The LGA guide states that the spring emerges along the line of the Grimbald Crag Fault, which brings the Cadeby Formation alongside the Brotherton Formation. We didn’t stop to look around the area, but I held back from the group to obtain a sample with my Estwing hammer, which is pale grey/brown in colour and is unlike the limestones from the Cadeby Formation seen on the walk.

 

A specimen of rock from the Brotherton Formation at the spring

 

When first very quick look at it with my hand lens when I collected it, I thought that it contained clear quartz grains but, closely examining it later, some surfaces have a finely botryoidal texture, some surfaces look porous and tufa like and, tested in several places, it scratches with a steel knife and reacts strongly with hydrochloric acid. 

 

The old quarry at Calcutts cricket ground

 

The last location was the old quarry at Calcutts cricket ground, to look at another exposure of the Sprotbrough Member of the Cadeby Formation, where I was more curious about the large cavities that have apparently been hollowed out of the abandoned quarry face, but nobody had any possible explanations for this. 

 

The quarry face at Calcutts cricket ground

The principal point of interest here is that the outcrop of the Cadeby Formation on the east side of the Nidd gorge is considerably thicker than in this quarry, which provides evidence that the ridge of limestone, upon which Knaresborough is set, is an original depositional feature and that the limestone thins away from it in all directions. 

 

An outcrop of limestone on Bland's Hill

Returning to Spitalcroft, where there are further exposures of yellow sandy limestone in some of the back gardens, we continued to Bland’s Hill and stopped at an exposure of limestone, which is not in the LGA guide or marked on old Ordnance Survey maps as a quarry. Its very pale, chalk like appearance is nothing like any exposure of the Cadeby Formation that I had seen before and I have wondered if it relates to the presence of petrifying springs, as occur a short distance to the west at Dropping Well. 

 

Lenses of green clay in the Bland's Hill limestone outcrop

 

The lower section is heavily weathered and broken down into a very fine powder and, in a few places, contains lenses of green clay that looks very similar in colour to that seen in the sandy variety of the Cadeby Formation found in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, which is a feature of the White Mansfield stone and weathers to leave a texture that looks like old crinkled leather.

 

A sample of weathered limestone powder from Bland's Hill

 

I obtained a specimen of rock and placed some of the powder into a sample bag for later examination, along with the very fine grained orange material that I had collected from Abbey Road. Both samples feel soapy and not gritty when rubbed between the fingers and react strongly with hydrochloric acid, with a close examination using a hand lens of the rock specimen revealing an extremely fine granular texture and voids. 

 

A specimen of limestone from Bland's Hill