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| A detail of an ironstone nodule in sandstone walling |
When working from the Chesterfield office of the District Valuer/Valuation Office in the mid 1980’s, my patch was North East Derbyshire – a part of the county that is underlain by Coal Measures strata and whose landscape was dominated by pit heads, coal waste tips and associated iron foundries, chemical works and engineering industries.
Even after the closure of the collieries and the landscaping of their waste tips, I hadn’t considered it to be worth visiting; however, when passing through Eckington and Barlborough on the Stagecoach No.53 bus on my day out to Bolsover, I noticed their churches and some interesting historic buildings and decided to investigate Barlborough a week later.
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| A general view along High Street |
With rain falling by the time that I arrived, I only undertook a very quick exploration of the old centre of the village, which stands on the edge of the Magnesian Limestone escarpment, and realised that I would have to come back another day for a better look.
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| The Memorial Gateway |
Although many of the vernacular buildings are built in cream/pale yellow dolomitic limestone, there is also a lot of Carboniferous sandstone. The Memorial Gateway on High Street, built in 1897, has laminated Carboniferous sandstone for the walling stone with massive sandstone for the dressings and the village cross, at the junction of Park Street, is also constructed of sandstone, although I didn’t closely examine it.
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| The village cross |
Barlborough Old Hall, built in 1618 with a design attributed to both John Smythson and Robert Smythson, has been described in an estate agent’s sales particulars as being built in sandstone that came from the Hardwick Hall quarry, 13 km to the south.
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| The south elevation of Old Barlborough Hall |
Having encountered Hardwick stone more than 25 years ago, when advising English Heritage on a stone suitable for restoring the Little Castle at Bolsover Castle, I recall that it is like very many minor sandstones found in the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation – full of iron oxides, not especially durable and essentially only really suitable for local vernacular buildings.
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| A general view of Barlborough Old Hall from the north-west |
Studying the few general photos of the fabric that I took very closely, the sandstone is generally highly weathered, has cavernous decay in many places and most of the quoins and dressings have been restored.
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| The north elevation of Barlborough Old Hall |
What interests me most about this house, however, is the sandstone used in the west end of the north-west wing, which I am pretty sure is the variety of Mexborough Rock known as “Rotherham Red Sandstone”, whose nearest source is the village of Harthill, 4 km to the north.
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| A detail of the sandstone in the wall opposite Barlborough Old Hall |
Opposite Barlborough Old Hall, the walling to some simple agricultural buildings exhibits the high content of iron in the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation sandstones, which once provided the raw materials for various foundries that were important industries in the towns of Eckington and Staveley, a few kilometres to the west.
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| The lodge to Barlborough Hall |
The C19 lodge to Barlborough Hall is built with pale orange/pink sandstone ashlar of no great quality and, returning to the main road, the dolomitic limestone used in 1 Church Street is slightly pink in colour and contains thin irregular beds of very fine sediment that is preferentially weathered to leave a texture that looks like old wrinkled leather.
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| 1 Church Street |
This is similar to that seen in the sandy variety of the Cadeby Formation known as White Mansfield stone, which contains fine beds of green clay, but it is highly unlikely that stone would be brought such distance to build a simple cottage.
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| A detail of 1 Church Street |
Although there is no mention of sandy dolomitic limestone in the geological memoir for the area, calcareous mudstone is found at the base of the Cadeby Formation around Barlborough, as at Bolsover. To the east of the village, pink variation was reported in Gipsyhill Quarry, with lenses of sand and silt occurring in outcrops a little further to the south in Clowne.
By this time, the rain had become quite heavy and I headed down to the church of St. James the Greater, which is set on the edge of the escarpment. A large post at the corner of the churchyard again is built out of a stone that stands out from the typical dolomitic limestone, with its occasionally deep pink colour, and deserves further investigation.
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| A large post on church street |
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