An Afternoon in Mexborough - Part 3

 

Mexborough Rock in the old quarry in Rock Pottery Yard

Continuing my walk down Bank Street in Mexborough, the Conservation Area strangely contains no listed buildings and stone buildings aren’t that common. One that still exists is the old Royal Electric Theatre, built in 1911 and now a Chinese restaurant, but its rare Baroque style cartouche is now painted in gaudy colours.

 

The old Royal Electric Theatre

A short distance further down the road, I passed Rock Pottery Yard, where I noticed a substantial quarry face, with massive Mexborough Rock being overlain by similar thinner beds to those seen a little further to the east behind Dazzle Hair Design.

 

The old quarry in Rock Pottery Yard

I didn’t go and investigate further and just took a few photos with my zoom lens to record its essential features, which includes a gentle apparent dip of the strata to the east; however, although I hadn’t thought of the area around Mexborough as a field trip for the Sheffield U3A Geology Group, I will make the effort to take a closer look when I next visit.

 

Mexborough rock in Rock Pottery Yard

Walking further down Bank Street, I encountered several interesting historic buildings in the Conservation Area that use brick, render and faience rather than the local sandstone as the principal building material.

 

Historic buildings in the Mexborough Conservation Area

 

The former Primitive Methodist Chapel, which is now used for selling spare parts for cars, is built with a sandstone that I don’t think is quarried locally. The ashlar masonry comprises medium grained, cross bedded sandstone that is uniformly light brown in colour and doesn’t have iron nodules or obvious Liesegang rings and other iron staining.

 

The former Primitive Methodist Church

 

Except for the part that runs for a short distance along the north of Garden Street, the Conservation Area stops at the top of High Street. Although I didn’t go and investigate its stonework, the former Mexborough Congregational Church, completed in 1867, is a substantial sandstone building in the Gothic Revival style.

Mexborough Congregational Church

The overall impression of Mexborough is that there are far too many empty spaces, where other historic buildings of lesser architectural merit have been demolished without thought of what might replace it. Also, like many similar small towns in South Yorkshire that largely relied on coal mining and associated industries to sustain the economy, it has seen much better days.

A view from the top of High Street in Mexborough