St. Laurence Adwick le Street - Part 2

The church of St. Laurence

Arriving on the train in Adwick le Street, the first part of my exploration of the exterior of St. Laurence’s church concerned the east end – comprising the chancel and north chapel – and I found several features of interest to the standing buildings archaeologist. 

A general view of the south elevation

Walking clockwise around its south elevation, the chancel wall also proves very interesting from this perspective, with three windows in quite different styles being inserted into the original Norman rubble walling. 

The south elevation of the chancel

From west to east, according to the Historic England listing, there is a 2-light window with shouldered heads, a pointed 2-light window with geometrical tracery and a square-headed window with 2 ogee lights – all of which are considered to be Perpendicular Gothic style - and the central and eastern windows have been restored either by the Victorian architects or in modern times and still retain sharp profiles. 

Views of the angled buttress showing ripple marks

The masonry on the corner of the chancel and the area around the east window has been substantially rebuilt, with ashlar masonry replacing the original rubble walling and forming the angled buttress. In the latter, a large proportion of the dolomitic limestone blocks have been differentially weathered – revealing undulating ripples that clearly mark the stones that have not been laid on their natural bed. 

Victorian rubble walling to the south aisle

Looking closely at the eaves details, there is more evidence of alterations to the roof and, walking further around the south elevation, the Victorian masonry that has been used to reface the south aisle and build the porch is very unusual and quite striking. Here, the walling comprises rubble stone that is a mixture of irregular flattened stones with laminations and ripple marks and larger extremely angular blocks that have no obvious sedimentary structures and are probably face bedded. 

A detail of rubble walling to the south aisle

My immediate thought was that the walling stone must have come from a quarry in the Brotherton Formation, based on its thin bedded nature and its extremely white colour compared to the surrounding quoins and the all of the other masonry in the church, which is typical of limestone from the Cadeby Formation. 

The tower

Moving on to the tower, there is also a very noticeable difference between the style of masonry in its two stages, with much larger and more regularly coursed blocks of limestone being used for the upper stage; however, there is no sharp change from rubble to ashlar masonry, which usually provides the strongest evidence that the tower has been raised at some point in the construction history of the church, and this needs further investigation - with closer examination of the window tracery, which help the archaeologist with the dating of a church.

An old preaching cross

Taking note of the partial shaft and base of an old preaching cross that I had previously seen in Dronfield, Edensor, Norton and various other places, I finished my brief survey of the exterior of St. Laurence’s church by quickly examining the masonry of the north aisle. 

The junction between the north aisle and chancel

Again I encountered very large ashlar blocks that contain distinct ripple marks, which makes me think that this phase of work was undertaken at the same time as the work to the angular buttress on the chancel, As with the north chapel and the chancel, a few courses of irregular masonry immediately below the eaves contrasts strongly with the ashlar walling below it, suggesting further Victorian work, but this needs further investigation.

A detail of a window and the masonry below the eaves of the north aisle

With limited time available before I had to catch a train back to Doncaster, in time to buy some fish from the market, I couldn't examine the masonry of the church in any great detail  and so I had a quick look at the porch before entering the church via its simple Norman south door.

The Norman south door