Main Street in Winster - Part 2

 

A detail of Tomkins Cottage

Since alighting from the No. 172 bus in Winster outside Winster Hall, it had taken an hour and forty five minutes to walk just less than 1.9 km back to my starting point on Main Street and I had photographed 42 of the 53 listed buildings for my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge. 

 

A circular walk around Winster starting at Winster Hall

 

Next on my list was the early C18 Denver House, built in reddened gritstone and squeezed into a narrow plot, with its gable end fronting the street and still retaining its shop window, but I just took  a few general photos from the opposite side of the road and didn’t look closely at it.

 

Denver House

 

The late C18 Old Brewhouse, which is listed for its group value only, is described by Historic England (HE) as being built with course gritstone rubble, but it looks to me like the walling is mainly dolomitised Carboniferous Limestone with a few isolated blocks of reddened gritstone, which is also used for the dressings. 

The Old Brewhouse

The HE description, which was originally dated 12th July 1967 with a minor amendment on 15th February 2013, refers to C20 top hung shop windows on the ground floor, but these have since been replaced with sash windows to match those on the upper storeys and their window jambs and the head of the right hand window have been replaced. 

 

Stanfree House (R) and Keystone House (L)

 

Buff and reddened gritstone is certainly used for the adjacent pair of late C18 cottages, named by HE as Stanfree House and Adjoining House, with the latter since given the name Keystone House, which relects the keystone in the door surround that looks like a later alteration. 

 

Moot House

Moot House and The Cottage is descibed by HE as a terrace of three houses that was originally a single house, which they date as mid C18 with C19 alterations and refer to "single early C19 bow shop front, C20 bow window and C19 glazed double doors to west end", but this doesn't correspond with its current appearance. 

 

Tompkins Cottage

 

On the village website, it is mentioned that the numbering the houses is inconsistent and an address map has been devised, which shows that Moot House is identified by its green painted woodwork and The Cottage, renamed Tomkins Cottage, immediately to the east of it – with its former use as a wholesale and retail dealer in small wares being recorded by the painted lettering on the door lintel.

 

The west and south elevation of the Winster shop

 

Across the road is the building decribed as Woodhays, which was formerly built as a house in the mid C18, with subsequent alterations, but which is now the community owned village shop. The gable end facing Main Street is built with rock-faced reddened gritatone with the west elevation bult with a mixture of cream coloured dolomitised limestone, grey unaltered limestone and occasional blocks of gritstone. 

 

The north and east elevations of the Winster shop

 

The east elevation is built with a similar mixture of cream and grey limestones for the walling and gritstone for the dressings, which include band courses that form a continuation of the sills and heads to the windows – some of which are blocked up – with massive stones used for the lintels and surrounds to the central doorway and the former doorway on the first floor. 

 

The Old Bakehouse

 

Taking a diversion down Woodhouse Lane, the C17 Old Bakehouse has some C18 alterations and is built with coursed limestone rubble walling that contains a few blocks of gritstone, with the latter being used for the dressings and Welsh slate for the roof. 

 

Nos. 2 and 3 Woodhouse Lane

Nos. 2 and 3 Woodhouse Lane are another pair of C18 cottages that possess no great architectural merit, but they are listed for their group value and the same materials are used, with the exception that No. 3 is roofed with plain tiles. 

 

Inglenook

 

The adjoining Inglenook comprises two single-bay early C18 cottages, built with coursed limestone rubble walling with some gritstone, which have been converted into one house with the doorway to the south cottage being blocked up with gritstone. 

 

Woodhays

 

Making my way back towards Main Street, I turned left into a yard where there is an unlisted cottage that is also named Woodhays, which makes me wonder if the the village shop has not been correctly named, and nestled in the corner is Rosedene.  

 

Rosedene

 

Yet another example of a mid C18 cottage, it is again built with a mixture of limestone rubble and roughly squared and coarsed gritstone for the walling and massive gritstone for the quoins and dressings, with its roof retaining its original stone slates, but it is again listed for its group value. 

 

The house to the north of Dene Croft

 

At right angles to Rosedene is the C18 House to the North of and Adjoining Dene Croft, which yet again has a mixture of dolomitised and unaltered limestone mixed with gritstone for the walling. Its most prominent feature is the use of very large blocks of massive gritstone for the quoins and for the surrounds to the entrance doorway and the carriage entrance. 

 

Dene Croft

 

Returning to Main Street, the last building on my Photo Challenge was Dene Court, another substantial reddened gritstone mid C17 house that has retained its stone slate roof. As with just about every other listed building that I seen in Winster, the extremely dull HE description provides no insight into the history of this very interesting village, which thrived on lead mining. 

 

The Main Street elevation of Dene Croft

Being conscious that I was now encroaching on private land, I took a very quick look at its east elevation, where the adjoining yard is floored with very irregularly sized paving and very large setts, which were probably quarried from the Corbar Grit. 

 

The east elevation of Dene Croft

With 18 minutes left before my bus arrived, I had a good chat about the local geology and lead mining history with someone who was manning the marquee outside the Market House, before returning to the Winster Hall bus stop where I met the Sheffield U3A Bus Explorers Group. 

 

The marquee outside the Market House

 

They informed me that they had caught the X17 bus from Sheffield to Matlock and then the No. 172 bus to Winster, because their experience was that the No. 218 TM Travel bus between Sheffiled and Bakewell, which I had used in the morning, was very unreliable.

 

The bus stop outside Winster Hall on Main Street

Main Street in Winster - Part 1

 

The gate piers to Winster Hall

Leaving the Church of St. John the Baptist, I took a couple of photos of Briar Cottage and its outbuilding on Elton Road, which provide further examples of Carboniferous Limestone – both dolomitised and unaltered - and reddened gritstone from the Corbar Grit.

 

Briar Cottage

 

Crossing over to Main Street, the next building on my British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge was the early C18 3-bay house next to Holmelea, which is set on a plot that abuts Holmelea and is bounded by Main Street and the yard on the other sides. A contrast in the colour of the gritstone masonry below the chimney stack and the adjacent walling suggests that there has been sulphate damage from the flue, which has necessitated the replacement of the stone.

 

The house to the east of Holmelea

 

At the end of the yard is Heathcote House and Cottage, dated to the C17 with C19 alterations. The front elevation is built with tooled squared and coursed blocks of buff/red gritstone, with the mullions to all the windows retained – including the gabled dormers – but limestone rubble is used for the west elevation and presumably the others that I couldn't see. 

 

Heathcote House

 

Looking east along Main Street, I could see that a combination of 3-storey townhouses and substantial cottages, dating from the early to late C18, are densely packed alongside the road, with their frontage not even separated from the street by railings and a small garden.

 

A view east along Main Street

 

I can’t recall seeing such a range of houses anywhere in my travels in Derbyshire and, presumably, owners/managers of the lead mines that drove the rapid growth of Winster occupied some of these, along with merchants who provided associated commercial services.

 

Stoneheath and the adjoining house

Stoneheath and the adjoining house date to the late C18 and the by now familiar reddened gritstone is used for the ashar and projecting quoins, with Welsh slate for the roof. Next door to this is The Old House, a 3-bay house with its central doorway having a semi-circular hood above and, as at Stoneheath, sashes have superseded mullioned windows. 

 

The Old House

A little further down Main Street is the detached Virginia House, which is Grade II listed for group value, although its architectural features – a plain 3-bay and 3-storey elevation with sash windows – are very similar to The Old House, except that it lacks a hooded doorway and limestone rubble is used for the walling. 

 

Virginia House

 

Retracing my steps down Main Street to photograph the listed buildings on the south side of the road, the early C18 Smithy House is mainly built with very large blocks of reddened gritstone and a few buff coloured blocks are used for the upper storey. The asymmetrical layout of its mullioned windows, the position of the chimney stacks and its two doorways seem to indicate that this was originally two houses, but the Historic England (HE) description doesn't mention this. 

 

Smithy House

 

Moving on to the next building on my Photo Challenge, the late C18 "Pair of Houses Opposite Winster House" are built with dolomitic limestone rubble walling, with gritstone quoins and dressings and plain tiles used for the roof. 

 

The pair of houses opposite Winster House

 

A little further along the road is the mid C18 Carillon, originally a pair of cottages built with a mixture of dolomitic limestone and reddened gritstone used for the walling, with massive blocks of gritstone used for the quoins and lintels to the doorways, but the roughcast render mentioned in the description has since been removed. 

Carillon

Stopping to photograph the K6 telephone kiosk, I then crossed over the road to get a better view of the C18 Lodge, formerly listed as the Crown Inn and having its name changed again to Old Crown House, is another building where the roughcast render has been removed to reveal a mixture of limestone and gritstone walling. 

 

The Lodge

 

Crossing back over the road to photograph the Grade II* listed early C17 Neoclassical style Winster Hall and its separately Grade II listed gate piers and boundary wall, this small country house strongly contrasts with all of the other houses on Main Street - not least because it is set back from the road and is surrounded by a garden. Built with gritstone ashlar, square in plan and with 5 bays, the central section is dominated by a doorway with Doric half columns beneath a moulded pediment and giant pilasters that rise to a balustrated parapet.

 

Winster Hall

 

St. John the Baptist's Church in Winster

 

The south elevation of the Church of St. John the Baptist

Continuing my exploration of Winster, having photographed several listed buildings on West Bank and Woolley's Yard, the next building on my Photo Challenge for Winster was the Church of John the Baptist's church on Elton Road. 

 

The east entrance to the churchyard 

 

With only 72 minutes before I planned to catch the No. 172 bus to Darley Dale, where I would link with the Transpeak service to Bakewell, and 25 buildings still to photograph, I quickly walked along the public footpath to the east entrance to the churchyard, which has gate piers with stepped pyrimidal caps. I didn't expect the church to be open, but many people were going in and out and I assumed that it had been opened especially for the Winster Secret Gardens event. 

 

The south elevation and the churchyard

 

The earliest chapel on this site is thought to have been built c.1100 and was one of five chapels given to the Abbey of Leicester during the reign of Henry II, but this was rebuilt in 1721 and nothing of the original building remains. 

 

A view from the south-east

 

Pevsner describes the church as being rebuilt 1840-42 to a design by Matthew Habershon, with only the tower being retained in an offset position to the south-west corner, with further alterations by A. Roland Barker in 1883. In respect of the latter phase of rebuilding, the church website describes that the earlier church had been poorly built and had become unsafe. 

 

The south aisle

Due to time constraints, I didn’t spend any time looking at the details of the stonework, which is yet another use of reddened gritstone from the Corbar Grit (formerly named the Ashover Grit) and I only took a few general record photographs of the church. 

 

A view from the south-west

 

While completing a circuit of the church, I did stop to photograph a few of the headstones made of Hopton Wood limestone, Peterhead granite and purple slate – which I thought was Welsh slate but could possibly be Swithland slate from Charnwood Forest – caught by eye, but I didn’t notice any of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones. 

 

Various headstones in the churchyard

 

Entering the church, the most notable feature is the double aisle, which has a single arcade with tall slim quatrefoil columns runnng down the middle - a feature that I had only seen before at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Leeds (1634). 

 

A view of the arcade and chancel arches

Pevsner describes this aspect of the 1883 alterations by Roland Barker as quite remarkable, with the diagonal arches that replace the traditional single chancel arch being "a surprising and successful effect", but a quick Google search didn't throw up any more information about him. 

 

A detail of an ornately carved capital on the arcade

I only spent 6 minutes taking general photographs of the interior, which included views from the gallery, but I didn't notice the font. This has an unusual design and is considered to be of Norman origin, but later reworked during the Tudor period. 

 

A small outcrop of dolomitised limestone

 

Leaving the churchyard and heading back to West Bank, I was interested to see that the boundary wall to the adjacent Dower House is built on a small outcrop of Carboniferous Limestone. Getting closer, its very porous texture with large voids immediately identified it as dolomitised limestone, with its rounded form reflecting its susceptibility to weathering compared to that seen in unaltered limestone from the Eyam Limestone Formation.

 

A detail of the outcrop of dolomitised limestone

West Bank and Woolley’s Yard in Winster

 

Boundary walls on the public footpath to Wooley's Yard

Arriving at West Bank along the path from East Bank, where I obtained a good appreciation of the physical characteristics of the underlying dolomitised Carboniferous Limestone, the first building on my list to photograph was the Grade II listed early C19 Harness Room and Squire Whites, originally a house and stable but with the latter since converted to residential use. 

 

Views of Harness Room and Squire Whites

 

Gritstone ashlar with some reddening, from the Ashover Grit, is used throughout, with some of the original stone slates to the roof of the house being replaced with concrete tiles. These have been occasionally used on other properties as an alternative to Welsh slate, but would probably not satisfy the current requirements for materials used in the Peak District National Park. 

 

Views of Rose Cottage

Rose Cottage, which is Grade II listed for its group value, is described by Historic England (HE) as “Mid-C18 incorporating parts of an earlier house. Coursed rubble with gritstone dressings, quoins, coped gables with moulded kneelers, east gable ashlar ridge stack, concrete tiles”. 

 

The dovecote at Rose Cottage

The mixture of limestone and gritstone for the walling is not mentioned and, very surprisingly, there is no reference to the much later west extension or the rebuilding of the north elevation, which has snecked masonry with an unusual partially rock-faced finish and incorporates a dovecote. 

 

Views of Bank House

At Bank House, described by HE as “C17 with C18 refashioning and C19 additions. Coursed rubble gritstone with quoins”, taking advantage of the Winster Secret Gardens event, with visitors wandering around the grounds of houses that would not normally be accessible, I was able to have a look at the west and rear elevations, where coursed limestone rubble is mainly used for the walling and part of the stone slate roofing has been replaced with Welsh slate. 

The geology around Winster with working quarries on the Ashover Grit

 

The provenance of the gritstone used in Winster is not known but, from my working knowledge of the area and having obtained several samples of stone for the Triton Stone Library – now housed in the Redmires Building at Sheffield Hallam University -  I am aware that reddened gritstone often occurs in the area.

 

The stone library in the Redmires Building

The most reddened variety is quarried at Birchover, although other buff/pink varieties are obtained from outliers of the Ashover Grit (renamed as Corbar Grit) to the north of Winster and on the main outcrop to the east of the River Derwent, where it has been described as ‘Matlock stone.’ 

 

A view of the Birchover Quarry

The former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel (1837) is built entirely with red gritstone, with a Welsh slate roof, and the front elevation has tall Venetian windows and a round arched doorway. Also included in the Grade II listing are the railings and the boundary walls into which they are set – described erroneously by HE as being built with limestone. 

 

The former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel

 

A little further down on the west side of the road is the mid C18 Old Shoulder of Mutton Inn, now converted into a residence, where the frontage is again built with red gritstone with an inscription next to the former entrance, but the extension with a carriage arch to the south uses a mixture of limestone and gritstone. 

 

The Old Shoulder of Mutton Inn

 

Opposite this is West Bank Cottage, a substantial 4-bay mid C18 house that is again built in gritstone, with a very large reddened block used for the lintel above the door. Uniformly buff gritstone has been used for the window dressings, which according to HE are C20 replacements of the original mullioned and transomed windows. 

 

West Bank Cottage

Taking a diversion down the footpath to Woolley's Yard, the dry stone boundary walls provide further examples of the local dolomitised Carboniferous Limestone, which made me wonder if these may have been a biproduct of the lead mine that operated here. 

 

The path to Woolley's Yard

 

Continuing past the Grade II listed outbuilding to the north of No. 11 Woolley’s Yard, the C18 Nos. 9 and 10 is a pair of 3-storey cottages that have been converted into one residence, with red gritstone mullioned windows and massive lintels to the doorways – one of which has been blocked up to form a window. 

 

Nos. 9 and 10 Woolley's Yard

 

I didn’t look at the walling to the front elevation close up, but it is mainly built with very pale cream coloured limestone with a few courses of red gritstone and these materials, along with quite thickly bedded grey limestone, are again used for Nos. 6 to 8 Woolley’s Yard. 

 

Nos. 6 to 8 Woolley's Yard

 

Although the HE description is again not very clear, these seem to have originally comprised a terrace of three C18 terraced houses with the northernmost house having its stone slate roof replaced with Welsh slate and its dormer window altered. 

 

No. 6 Woolley's Yard

 

To this has been added a slightly smaller cottage, which is built with more thinly bedded pale cream/buff limestone that looks to be dolomitised. After taking a few general record photos, I retraced my steps back to West Bank, where I next stopped at the Burton Institute, which is marked as a hall on the 1889 Ordnance Survey map and is still the focal point of the community. 

 

The Burton Institute

 

With its late Perpendicular Gothic style first floor windows and the quatrefoil window to the right of the entrance are interesting details, it further contributes to the aesthetic quality of the Conservation Area and I am surprised that it is not even listed for its group value. The front elevation is built with buff gritstone with red gritstone for the side elevations – both of which have sections of coursed and random rubble walling incorporated into the ground floor. 

 

Ashton House

 

A little further down West Bank is a substantial early C19 house listed by HE as “House Attached South of Kirkby House and Attached Shop” but since named Ashton House, which is only listed for its group value but I thought was quite impressive, with its tall chimney stacks, projecting quoins, hoodmoulds and other architectural details.

 

The gate piers to Dower House

 

The very ornate gate piers to Dower House, at the corner of West Bank and Elton Road, are described by HE as having grotesque masks, foliage, cartouches, guttae and serpents. The house was opened for the Winster Secret Gardens and this enabled me to see the late C17 rear elevation of this large house, which is built with limestone walling and gritstone dressings.

 

Views of Dower House