A Walk to St. Bartholomew's Church

A view of St. Bartholomew's church from Maltby Crags

For a geological field trip, I probably wouldn’t spend half an hour at Maltby Crags but it is easy to walk down to Roche Abbey, where the well bedded limestone of the Cadeby Formation can be examined in the sheer rock faces that are popular with climbers.

Roche Abbey

The stone used to build this magnificent Cistercian abbey was taken from quarries nearby - the South Yorkshire RIGS Group held promotional events for the general public of all ages here.

A bus service doesn’t run along the road to Roche Abbey and, being aware of the time needed to walk there and back, I took a quick look at Maltby Dike and headed up through Maltby Low Common  - a  Quaternary river terrace - to see St. Bartholomew’s Church.

Like other water courses that flow through the gorges in this region - which were cut into the Magnesian Limestone during the Quaternary Period by fast flowing glacial meltwater - it is now just a trickle; however, looking up the valley towards Rotherham, it is easy to see where water has left its mark on the landscape.

A simplified geological map of the area around Maltby

On the way, the Permian dolomitic limestone is occasionally seen in the higher ground above Maltby Dike and - as any keen botanist would point out - the change in the geology to sandy Carboniferous rocks is reflected by the various species of plants that grow here.

A view of Maltby Low Common

St. Bartholomew's, like so many other old English parish churches, is now generally closed due to problems of theft and vandalism and I could only walk around the exterior; nonetheless, although the old church was largely demolished and rebuilt by the Victorians, the tower still remains - with its distinctive herringbone masonry - and records a transition between the late Saxon and early Norman style of building.

St. Bartholomew's church in Maltby