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| A specimen of sandstone with laminations rich in iron oxides |
I concluded my brief exploration of the historic buildings of Elsecar by taking a few photographs of the Grade II Listed Holy Trinity church, which was built in 1843 in the Early English Gothic Revival style and with the patronage of the 5th Earl Fitzwilliam.
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| Holy Trinity church |
Except for the Woolley Edge Rock, which was widely used in the district and has distinct cross-bedding and often a medium to coarse grain size, where I have seen it used, I don't know that much about the building stones used in Barnsley.
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| Holy Trinity church |
However, like much of the sandstone that I had seen elsewhere in the village, its variable colour, abundance of iron staining and Liesegang rings and differentially weathered softer beds suggest to me that the stone has been obtained from one of the Pennine Middle Coal Measures Formation (PMCM) sandstones that outcrop locally.
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| Weathering of sandstone at Holy Trinity church |
Before heading back to Wentworth, I popped into the churchyard extension to photograph one of the Commonwealth War Graves that are found here. On my previous travels, I had encountered several of these and, being good photographic subjects, I make a point of finding regimental crests that I have not seen before – in this case the West Yorkshire Regiment.
20 minutes later, I was on the path back to Wentworth and heading up to King’s Wood, which mainly sits on thin bands of unnamed PMCM sandstone that lie beneath the Kent’s Rock, with a small outcrop of Barnsley Rock at its westernmost edge.
The updated British Geological Survey Sheet 87 map shows that the area to the immediate south of King’s Wood is infilled/restored ground, which presumably relates to mining of the Barnsley coal seam here; however, at the time I didn’t notice anything unusual in the landscape and just carried on down the path at the edge of the field.
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| A panoramic view looking toward Wentworth |
The path drops into a very noticeable vale in the PMCM mudstones but, before I reached the stream that occupies it, I noticed that the soil contains numerous small pieces of distinctly reddened, fine grained sandstone that have presumably been brought to the surface by ploughing.
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| Sandstone brought to the surface by ploughing |
Of the two specimens that I collected, the large piece is light brown in colour, finely laminated and micaceous, with only a very thin layer of red/brown iron oxides/hydroxides on the bedding planes, but the smaller one is reddened throughout.
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| Specimens of reddened sandstone |
Continuing along the path up the other side of the vale, without finding any rock exposures in the stream banks, I stopped to take a few photos of the topography that I had encountered since leaving King’s Wood, before arriving at Main Street in Wentworth.
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| A view towards King's Wood with Hoyland in the distance |
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